Degrees of Separation
by Britani Gael
Summary: AU. What if Vergil had won the final fight in the Underworld, instead of Dante? What if he’d lost to Mundus anyway? Seven years after Devil May Cry 3, Vergil returns to the human world – and bring all sorts of problems, demons, and enemies with him.
1. Different Fates

Title: Degrees of Separation

Author: Britani Gael (sterlingsylver at lj)

Fandom: Devil May Cry 3

Rating: PG-13

Summary: AU. What if Vergil had won the final fight in the Underworld, instead of Dante? What if he'd lost to Mundus anyway? Seven years after Devil May Cry 3, Vergil returns to the human world – and bring all sorts of problems, demons, and enemies with him.

---

Chapter One: Different Fates

Vergil was losing.

For a moment, the weight of the Force Edge was more than he could handle; he fell to his knees, and then his hands. "Am I… being defeated?" He nearly choked on the words, and the blood that was filling his mouth.

Defeated by his brother, of all people. "What's wrong? Is that all you got?" Dante took a few swaggering steps forward, try to sound cocky, though his obvious exhaustion sucked the confidence out of his voice. "Come on, get up. You can do better than that."

He'd never lost to Dante, not once. Not when he was fighting fair, anyway.

The rage that filled him was tangible. He snarled, willing that rage into the strength to stand. His balance was shaky, his breathing was ragged – and the shaking of the ground nearly brought him back to his knees.

He looked around, but he knew what was happening. "The portal to the human world is closing, Dante," he said. "Because the amulets have been separated." He knew what that meant to Dante. His brother would be literally and figuratively trapped in hell.

But Dante ignored him. "Let's finish this, Vergil." He stared at Vergil, his eyes reflecting not anger but determination, and something else as well. "I have to stop you," he said. "Even if that means killing you."

As if that hadn't even been an option before.

Seeing his little brother so serious, it almost made him smile. But then he raised the Force Edge, swung it over his head and behind him. Dante wasn't the only one fighting for something beyond his own amusement.

With a wordless yell, Vergil charged.

Dante hesitated, then he hefted Rebellion and started running. The distance between them was closing rapidly. This was going to be the final blow of their final fight.

_You aren't going to kill me, Dante._

He swung his sword.

And then he swung it again, again, and again.

---

It'd been hours.

Her father was dead by her hands, her mother finally avenged, and still her mission was far from over. Demons and devils shrieked into the wind, echoing off the walls of Temen-Ni-Gru.

She was going to have to kill all of them, sooner rather than later, and she would appreciate help. Not to mention how strangely naked she felt without the weight of Kalina Ann on her back. She'd made her way back to the library, wandered the strangely empty halls of the tower, picked her way through the passages and found her way outside, where she was currently waiting.

She wasn't waiting for _him_. She was just… waiting.

She'd circled the base of the tower twice, wondering if anything could be done to get rid of it. Was this going to be her father's legacy? An eyesore in the middle of a major city? But those demons weren't going to kill themselves. She turned back to the entrance, and she saw a figure stumbling over the rubble there.

She saw a flash of silver hair, and it was irritating how relieved she felt.

"Dante!" she called, starting to walk towards the figure, when she realized what she was seeing. _Two_ heads of silver hair – and two coats, one red, the other blue.

The figure in red was leaning heavily on his brother. The man who had worked with her father for more than a year, who had caused his entire mess in the first place. Vergil.

His head turned at the sound of her voice, as if in slow motion. He shifted Dante on his shoulder awkwardly, and started walking towards her.

Lady narrowed her eyes and pointed her weapons. She knew shooting him would be useless – the bullets had never harmed Dante any, so surely they wouldn't hurt his brother. She was also running low on ammunition.

Still, she kept her fingers on the triggers as he approached.

Vergil was walking with a limp, a bad one, obviously struggling under the weight of his brother; blood pattered on the ground with every step. Whatever had happened to them – and it had probably been each other – had clearly nearly killed them. She wasn't even certain Dante was still breathing. His face was deathly pale.

Vergil didn't say a word.

She let him within ten feet of her, marveled at how his pace didn't waver a fraction, and then she fired several warning shots into the ground. "What do you want?"

He stopped. And then he let Dante slide off his shoulder and crash soundlessly to the ground. "You care about him," he said. Not a question. "Then he's your problem now."

She lowered her weapons slowly, trying to keep her eyes on Vergil. But her gaze fell on the demon on the ground, and the puddle of blood that was growing beneath him.

Vergil must have noticed her hesitation, because he took several steps back, his expression completely blank. That distance wasn't near enough to guarantee her safety, she knew, but she understood the sentiment.

Holstering her weapons, she covered the distance to Dante's still form and knelt next to it.

"Dante?" She shook his shoulder, and wasn't surprised when she got no response. She looked back up at Vergil, but she still couldn't read anything on his face. Then she pulled Dante up by his shoulders and rolled him over.

She gasped.

Lady had never seen so much blood in her life, not from a single person. His entire torso was coated in it, sliced in so many places. Delicately cut to ribbons. She could see his ribs through his wounds, muscles and tendons, blood was running freely from his mouth and nose and ears, pooling on the ground beneath him. He was dying. He had to be dying.

But she'd shot him in the head and it hadn't killed him. Surely he could… She found his hand and grabbed it, hoping to feel his fingers squeeze her back, but his skin was slick with blood and he was as responsive as a corpse. Damnit, just when she was starting to like him, he was going to go and die on her?

"Very touching."

Her head snapped up. "You did this."

Vergil met her gaze, his fingers curling around the hilt of the katana he held at his side. It was as good as an agreement.

"If you were trying to kill him, why bring him back?" she demanded.

"I don't have to explain myself to you." His voice was so cold, inflectionless, so different from his brother's. "He is a son of Sparda. He'll survive."

"Son of Sparda…" Yes, that's what Dante had said. A demon with a father and a brother. She only knew the legends, but she could hope that the power those stories spoke of would be enough to save her friend. Even if it seemed impossible.

Vergil turned back towards the tower.

"Where are you going?" she asked. She didn't care, but if Dante ever woke up he might.

He paused. "I'm going to claim what's mine."

Lady knew what he meant, but she couldn't stop him. She wasn't even sure she wanted to. He started walking again, his pace brisk.

He disappeared into the tower just as Dante's eyes snapped open. They roamed around in his head sightlessly, his mouth weakly trying to form words. She could hear blood bubbling in his throat.

Lady held his hand tighter. "Dante, don't—"

"…ergil? 'sat you, Vergil?" His whole body twitched, and suddenly his fingers closed around her hand hard enough to break bones.

She tried to jerk back, but against that kind of strength she didn't have a chance. He was a demon, not a person, why did she keep forgetting?

"…you okay, Vergil?" She could barely hear his voice. "Is Mom okay?"

His chilling words had barely left his lips when he lost consciousness, his head rolling to the side.

Lady pulled her hand back quickly, rubbing the fingers and joints to make sure they were all still working. She was relieved to see that his chest was still moving, faint as though the motions were. He was still alive. She could almost believe that Vergil was right, and that Dante just might pull through.

Except Vergil had been trying to convince himself, just like she was trying to convince herself now.

She sat back on the ground. Already, Dante's blood was drying on her hands.

For the second time today, she felt tears slide down her cheeks.

---


	2. Times Have Changed

Title: Degrees of Separation

Author: Britani Gael (sterlingsylver at lj)

Fandom: Devil May Cry 3

Author's Notes: This chapter is kind of long, sorry. If you're allergic to original characters I'd suggest avoiding it – though I promise the focus of the story will stay where it belongs, on our hero. And heroine. And anti-hero.

---

Chapter Two: Times Have Changed

_Seven years later_—

Vergil smelled Earth.

He hated the relief he felt. This was the world he'd tried to hard to escape, the side of him he tried so hard to discard. But this was air he was breathing, air without the essence of fire and brimstone, and he filled his lungs with it. And he did it again.

He did not have time for this.

He was standing at the top of Temen-Ni-Gru – not a scene he was ever likely to forget. But now it was day instead of night, and though the tower was still standing there was a city standing around it. He could see people below, mulling around like insects. They were mulling around in buildings that were not destroyed, and that gave him pause.

How much time had passed?

He did not have time for this. His departure had not been _subtle_, and they would be on him any moment. The portal was still open, glowing menacingly above him, invisible to human eyes even though he had to work to tear his gaze away.

He had no idea how to close it.

That wasn't true. Vergil had one idea, and only one: separating the amulets. He'd tried. He couldn't pull them apart. He didn't know if it was due to weakness of body or of character but he could not pull the amulets apart.

He'd lost several fingernails in the attempt, though. And it occurred to him that he had no real idea of how they worked. Damn, but he should have listened to Arkham's ramblings when he had the chance.

His entire body ached. The wounds Dante had given him were still lingering, wounds from Arkham turned Sparda, wounds from his catastrophic battle with Mundus and his army. Nothing was healing like it should, because he was almost too tired to stand.

His thoughts turned to his options.

_Run_.

There was a voice inside his head, a voice he despised, and it was screaming at him to run and hide while he still had the chance. It was the voice of a little boy who once had spent the night impaled on a volley of swords and spears, pinned to a tombstone in a graveyard.

He wasn't that boy anymore, and he'd just done enough running to last him his entire life.

He had an advantage; he knew that they were coming.

In his brief time in Hell, he'd fallen into every trap imaginable. He'd been beaten and cut and worn down. He knew they were coming _here_, and he was here first.

It was their turn.

He just hoped his own power would be enough.

---

It was late afternoon by the time the cherry red motorcycle came to a stop outside of offices of Devil May Cry.

The child on the back didn't waste a second as he leapt off the motorcycle, trying to tug off his helmet as he went. He couldn't quite manage it, though, and had to stand and wait as the woman on the front of the bike stepped off and undid the clasp at his throat.

The second the helmet was clear of his head, he tore up the steps of Devil May Cry, barged in without knocking, and started shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Dad! Dad, we're here! I'm sorry we're late, but Mom said there wasn't any good reason to hurry and you never know what time it is anyway and—"

Dante looked up from his desk and grinned. "No problem, Verge. No problem."

He'd spent the last half hour nailing demonic wards to the windows and doors – a task he hated, since the things gave him an awful headache. The kid didn't appreciate them much, either, but Mom said they were a requirement, and for once Dante happened to agree with her. Fifteen minutes before that had been spent making up a room that hadn't been used in more than two months, and taking down all the inappropriate posters had taken ten.

Enzo had taken way longer than he should've. Didn't the guy understand the word _vacation_?

Oh, and he'd ordered a pizza. It was cold by now, yeah, but it was still pizza.

Verge stood by the door and waited.

With a false sigh, Dante dragged himself out of his seat, crossed the room and picked the kid up. "You got my present?"

Verge's face lit up. "Yeah!"

"What'd you think?"

"Well," he took a deep breath, "I like action figures. Spiderman's not my favorite, Iceman's my favorite, but I like Spiderman lots and Mom said I could get a Green Goblin too if my room's clean for a whole month and Venom too if I _also_ don't cause any trouble—" Another deep breath. "—and there wasn't anyone really at my party 'cause you weren't there, except my cousin Jeremy – and he's not my cousin, really, just his mom is someone _my_ mom knows at work and—"

"Woah, slow down, kid." Dante set him on the ground, then peered out the door. "Isn't your mom coming in?"

"I'm not _kid_," Verge said. He crossed his arms, looking very irritated. "And Mom said for me to say that she's still not talking to you. And that I have to brush my teeth and stuff."

"Oh," Dante said, frowning. She was still mad at him? _Some women_… He handed a small white envelope to the kid, who took it with a puzzled expression. "Go run that out to your mom, all right? Before she leaves." He'd take it out himself, except if she saw him step outside she might just drive off.

Verge nodded, and then darted outside.

Lady was sitting on her bike outside, drumming her fingers on the handgrips as Verge ran down the steps and started jabbering at her. She narrowed her eyes at Dante over Verge's head, but she took the envelope, folded it up and stuffed it into a jacket pocket. She said something to the kid Dante couldn't read on her lips, and Verge nodded solemnly.

She pointed at his backpack, which Verge had left strapped to the bike. She probably figured Dante didn't have any clothes for the kid or something. Verge pulled the pack off and carried it in his hands.

She started the motorcycle just as Verge started up the steps again. Dante waved at her through the window. Lady rolled her eyes, revved the engine, and shot off.

Verge burst through the door. "She says she's only a _little_ mad at you, but that we'd both better behave ourselves, or else—"

"That's enough about your mom." Dante reached down and messed up the kid's hair. "Looks like someone got a haircut."

"_Daad_," Verge whined, stopping to push his hairstyle back into place. Where before his brown hair had brushed his collar, now it was neatly trimmed above his ears.

"I got it cut a long time ago, 'cause Mom said it was too long. And it was hot in the summer and stuff… Can we pay Nintendo?"

Dante picked the backpack up out of Verge's hands. "After you eat something."

"We had spaghetti already."

He dropped the bad on the desk as he walked by. "Fine," he said, his voice shorter than he intended. "We can play in a minute."

Verge was silent for several seconds, which more often than not was a sign of concern. Then, "Dad?"

"Yeah, V?"

"You aren't… You're not mad at me, are you?"

Dante turned around. Verge was still standing by the door, staring straight at the ground. "What?"

"I know—I couldn't come over for a long time, and Mom yelled at you on the phone lots of times, and it's 'cause I told her that—"

Dante crossed the room, knelt down in front of the kid and put his hands on Verge's shoulders. "Verge, listen. The reason you couldn't come over? It wasn't your fault, it wasn't your Mom's fault—"

"But I'm the one who—"

"It was my fault. Me. I screwed up. Got it?"

Verge nodded slowly, and then he gave a small smile. "Yeah, I got it."

"All right." Dante stood. "So how about some Super Smash Brothers? And some ice cold pepperoni?"

The kid rolled his eyes, almost exactly like his mother had only a few minutes ago. "The pizza's cold _again_?"

"Hey, kid, I don't work miracles, here."

Verge just laughed as he followed Dante into the kitchen.

---

Lady coasted to a stop in front of the old warehouse, checking against the address against the one she had stored in her head. She hoped her information was right, this time, because if it wasn't she just might have to start shooting to kill.

Putting the kickstand down with her foot, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the envelope Verge had given her outside of Devil May Cry.

Typical Dante.

Lady turned the envelope over in her hand and opened it with her fingernail. She wasn't surprised to find several thousand dollars in cash inside.

She got these little gifts irregularly – Dante could never keep to a schedule – but often enough that she'd soon amassed a small fortune. Over the years she'd told him time and time again that she didn't need his money, and certainly didn't want it, and still the envelopes kept coming.

Since Dante wouldn't take it back, she'd stashed most of the money in a savings account. Verge could decide what to do with it when he got older. The rest of the money went for clothes for Verge, and sometimes groceries. Not that she'd ever admit _that_ to Dante, but she did work freelance. Sometimes paychecks were few and far between.

Speaking of which…

It was going to be a lot longer between paychecks if she didn't finally get this mission over with.

She stepped off the bike and put the keys in her jacket pocket. She folded up the envelope and put it there as well.

Weapons check. She'd left Kalina Ann at home for this one, since she doubted she could collect if she blew up her bounty. Instead she'd brought two pistols and a powerful flashlight taped to the barrel of one of them. She was also carrying a special something she'd picked up for just this occasion.

She started walking up to the building. Now she needed a plan. She could just barge in and start firing. Or she could go for the subtle, sneaky route, creeping and doing a silent search.

She decided she would save the subtle routine for a day when she had more patience.

Lady kicked the door in and marched straight to the center of the room, swinging the flashlight in tight arcs around her. The warehouse was mostly empty, just some crates and garbage lying around. Unfortunately, the building had a lot of walls, beams, and other structures. She was hoping for wide open and empty.

She caught sight of her target quicker than she'd hoped, a huddled figure curled up in a corner. She started walking towards it slowly, and then picked up her pace. The sleeping girl didn't even move.

For a moment, Lady thought that maybe, yes, it really was going to be that easy. And then the girl's eyes snapped open.

She jumped to her feet, shielding her face with her hands from the light. "Ow, stop! What the hell are you—" She peered around her fingers, and then her eyes widened. "Oh God, it's _you_."

Lady smiled. "Did you miss me?"

The girl ducked, and ran straight up the wall behind her.

Lady peppered the wall with gunfire, leaving quarter sized holes in the corrugated metal. Too late, Mara had already vanished.

"_Damnit._" Lady swung the flashlight beam around, following its path with her pistol. "Mara, come down here this second, or—"

"Or you'll use your cross voice on me?"

Lady turned to the sound of her voice. Mara was hanging from a beam, her feet firmly planted on the metal. She did a flip, not up but _down_, and as she fell suddenly stopped so her head was level with Lady's.

Mara was seventeen, with stringy blonde hair and clothes that didn't fit – probably salvaged from garbage cans. Her oversized clothes and obnoxiously childish attitude made her seem years younger than her age. Her powers and obvious delight in tormenting people made her a particularly dangerous sort of brat.

Her capture and return was worth fifteen thousand dollars. Of course, half of that was in advance, already spent. More of a reason to get this done.

"Mara, I just want to know what it is you want." Part of the problem with tracking the girl was that she seemed entirely aimless. She just liked hurting people. And things. With fire.

The girl turned in midair, hanging upside down with her arms folded across her chest. It was an eerie, disorienting effect – gravity seemed to be reversed, her hair still fell around her shoulders. "What do I want? I want you to leave me alone!"

Besides her supernatural motions, Mara had no other powers. Lady was certain she could take the girl down with ease. If only she could catch her.

The girl started moving upwards, as if pulled up by a rope. "You've been stalking me for weeks, you creepy lady."

"I'm trying to help you," Lady retorted. It was half true.

"I've been following you, too, you know." Her voice came from the shadows above.

"And I've got to tell you, this is no profession for a mother—"

Lady had a plan for this situation, and that plan was the charm slightly smaller than her fist. She pulled it out of her pocket slowly.

"And I'm not even the only one following you! Bet you didn't know _that_, you—freaking—psycho—"

Lady cart wheeled directly under the girl, and then she looked at the charm in her hand. "Hope this works," she muttered. She knelt and slammed it into the ground.

The crystal shattered and the entire room filled with white light, illuminating everything from the shadows in the ceiling to Mara's startled face. Lady knew from experience that frightening the girl tended to disrupt her force fields, but she must have been learning, because this time she stayed floating.

The light faded, and Mara peered down at her. "What the…"

Lady rolled her eyes. "You don't know much about magic, do you?"

Mara's hair fell and her clothes sagged – and then the rest of her spell wore off and she fell out of the air with a yelp. Lady rolled out of the way as the girl crashed to the ground, and then lay there in a still heap.

Lady stood and approached the body slowly, keeping a single pistol trained on her. "Are you still alive?" she asked. "I'd just hate it if you broke your neck."

The girl groaned. "Not … cool," she managed, rolling onto her back and coughing.

"That charm will keep you out of the air for a minute. After that, you try to move and I'll empty this clip into your skull."

Mara moved to sit up, then flopped back onto the ground and sighed. "Whatever."

Lady circled around her, coming to a stop near her feet. The girl crossed her arms and had her eyes closed, as if getting caught was nothing more than a nuisance. "Who else is following me?" Lady asked.

Mara said nothing.

Lady fired a shot into the ground beside Mara's head. The girl screamed as the dirt and dust showered her face, and Lady wore a satisfied smile as she repeated the question. "Who else is follow—"

The entire building shuddered; the metal walls shrieked and the pipes above their heads cracked, water started dripping from the ceiling. And if Lady wasn't crazy a wind was starting up in here. She froze.

"I think they might have caught up with you."

"Mara, I'll say it again," Lady said, her voice low. "Who else is following me?"

Mara's eyes glittered with malice. "_Freaks_."

The first of the demons appeared directly above their heads. Lady shot them down quickly, and the sand showered over them both and quickly turned to mud in the dripping water. The building shook again, the water came down like rain, and the rest of the demons arrived.

Mara scrambled to her feet. "Jesus Christ!"

Lady made a note: when in doubt, bring Kalina Ann. She wasn't Dante, and mowing down all these monsters was going to be a lot of work with only a pair of pistols. "They're demons!" she called over her shoulder. "Stay close, and you should be—"

"You're fucking nuts, lady." Mara's eyes roamed, probably looking for an escape route. She found it in a vertical beam to their right. "I'm out of here, see ya late—"

Lady took careful aim, and the second Mara's feet left the ground she shot her out of the air.

The girl's scream was ear piercing, and it stopped the second her head smashed against the ground. Lady winced, but she had no time to worry about that now. She'd just have to make sure to shoot up any demons around the girl's body.

She almost slipped on a puddle as she swung around, shooting as she went. Pride demons usually went down with one head shot, which was good. She hadn't been planning on taking out an army, and she hadn't brought nearly enough bullets.

They converged on her, they died in hails of bullets. They came steadily until her third reload, and then they started falling back.

Demons rarely showed any signs of fear. She knew that, she kept it in mind as they started circling her.

She slowed her firing. If they were changing their tactics, she was going to need an escape plan, fast.

Of course, that would probably involve abandoning Mara. And considering the fact that the unconscious girl probably would have been able to escape herself just fine if Lady hadn't shot her in the leg, that wasn't particularly fair.

The demons stopped moving, all of them staring at her. Lady used the brief pause to reload her guns again. Whatever happened, she was going to be ready.

There was a stirring in the crowd, and the Pride demons started backing off fast.

They were making way for their leader, she realized, for another demon coming up from behind. It pushed its way to the front of the crowd, and stared her down.

It was a type of demon she'd never seen.

It stood almost like a man, slightly taller, with arms that hung to the ground and heavy claws at the end of them. Its skin was milky white, with blood red markings spotted all over it. But most grotesque was its head.

It was perfectly round, almost the size of his chest cavity, and split right in half where the lips would be. She could see teeth poking through the skin, blood running down its face. No eyes, no ears.

It opened its massive mouth, and to Lady's shock, sounds started coming out. "_S_—_Spa_—_Spard_—_aa_—"

Her weapons lowered a fraction.

"_Ste_—_stench_—_of_—_Sp_—_Sparda_—_aa_—"

She realized that it wasn't after her. It was after what it smelled on her.

_Oh God_.

She had to get out of here. She needed to be back at Devil May Cry.

Not until she killed every last one of them, first.

If only the situation was different. Then she might actually enjoy it.

---

Dante had nearly fallen asleep at his desk when the knocks on his door startled him into consciousness.

His head snapped up. "I am totally doing my paperwork, here," he said to no one.

The pounding on the door only went up in volume.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" He shrugged into his jacket, holstered his guns for good measure, and then crossed the room and opened the door.

No rain, but Lady was soaking wet anyway; her hair was sticking to her face and her shirt was sticking to her chest, and Dante briefly entertained the possibility that she'd wanted him so bad she'd come crawling back here, in the middle of a job and everything. Unlikely, though, considered how furious her expression was.

She glared at him as he stared at her. "Can I come in?"

"Well, so you _are_ speaking to me. I was wondering—"

She gave him a look that was a pretty good substitute for slapping him, and dragged herself inside and her baggage with her. Her baggage being an unconscious girl, hanging on Lady's arm and drooling on her sleeve.

Lady pitched the girl onto the ground. She hit the floor with an awful _thunk_, and groaned. She was bleeding pretty heavily from a wound in her leg – and unless she had some sort of healing powers she was going to need help with it pretty damn quick.

"Woah, woah. _What_—"

"My bounty," Lady said, by way of explanation.

"Yeah, I kinda figured, but didn't Enzo say something about her being in one piec—"

"Dante, where's Vergil?"

"I thought we decided he was probably dead?"

"Dante, where is Vergil, _our son_?" And there was something in her tone that made him take this situation a whole lot more serious.

Though Lady might have had problems with how he did pretty much everything, he'd never doubted that she trusted him with Verge. Well, not until two months ago, but that was more of an emotional issue – he couldn't see her thinking Verge was in any _danger_ with him. "C'mon, Lady, the kid's in bed upstairs. What, do you think I'm completely irre—"

"I don't have time for this." She shoved past him, and started pounding up the stairs. "Verge? Vergil, answer me!"

"_Stop… yelling_…" The girl on the ground moaned.

Dante stepped over her and headed after Lady. "You know I have wards all over this place, right? Not to mention some pretty nasty spells. There's no way anything could—"

She slammed Verge's bedroom door open. "Vergil!"

"Lady, what the _fuck_ is going on?"

She was standing still in the doorway, and Dante felt his stomach sink a little as he came up behind her. He had a good idea of what she was seeing.

He looked over her shoulder, and then his stomach sank a lot.

Verge's room was done up exactly like Dante had left it hours ago, with various Marvel posters taped to the walls and plaid sheets neatly folded on the bed. A nightlight was flickering in the corner. The problem was that there wasn't any kid in it.

Lady spun around, and hit him in the face with her fist.

She'd shot him in the head, yeah, but she'd never gone and punched him, so Dante staggered back in surprise, not in pain. "Holy—" he said.

"He's gone!"

"Calm down, I'll look for him downst—"

"Dante, he's gone. I know he's gone. He's _gone_." She walked to the center of the room, and then she sank down on the bed.

He followed her, noticing for the first time just how beat she looked. She was breathing hard, and he could smell an awful lot of gunpowder on her. "Lady, what do you know that I don't?"

Lady looked up at him. "I—nothing, really, just…"

She put her head in her hands and told him about Mara, the demon in the warehouse, and everything else.

---


	3. Right Hand Man

Title: Degrees of Separation

Author: Britani Gael (sterlingsylver at lj)

Fandom: Devil May Cry 3

Chapter Three: Right Hand Man

---

"—_sme_—_smell_—_ste_—_st_—_nch_—"

"—_blood_—_Sp_—_Spa_—_Spardaaaa_—"

"—_here_—_sme_—_ee_—_ell_—_heeere_—"

The demons lumbered around the stone room, turning in graceless circles as they struggled to follow the scent. In truth, they probably could and would have gone for hours, but Vergil was sick of hearing their rasping voices.

If he was supposed to believe that these albino freaks were the brains of the operation, than Sergius must have thought he was a complete moron.

"—S—_S_—_Spa_—_Spaard_—"

"You're correct," Vergil said. He descended on them from above, unsheathing Yamato in midair and hacking the three demons into tiny pieces before his feet touched the ground.

"Pathetic." He flicked the blood of his sword, and resheathed it with a frown. Picking off the canon fodder was getting him nowhere. Much as he hated to admit, his strength was only going to carry him so far. And not much further.

He needed to make progress.

Temen-Ni-Gru was exactly like he remembered it, which meant that the humans either could not see it, or knew better than to interfere with its workings. Dante had opened most of the doors and puzzles already. At least the idiot had been good for something.

He wondered how Dante would feel about his return, and about the demons he'd just unleashed on the city.

He wondered if Dante was still alive.

He'd left his brother bleeding and broken. If Dante had survived, and hadn't managed to find himself in any more trouble, he probably would have been back on his feet in a few hours, fully recovered in a week. Maybe days. If he had survived. Vergil couldn't even be sure a week had passed in the human world.

He'd seen the people outside – no, he wasn't going to try and piece all _that_ together. He would be working from his own perspective. He'd left Dante with his lady friend outside the tower a little over four and a half days ago, he'd been on the run in hell ever since.

"_S—Sss—Sss—"_

This was getting dull.

The voices were coming from the hallway outside. What idiot had decided that demons needed to speak? They were obnoxious enough just as they were.

He stalked outside, hoping at least that their numbers would be significant this time. He was itching for a real fight. He stepped through the door and he drew his sword.

There were demons all right, there were about a hundred of them and they walked right past him without even a sniff. "_Ss—Sss—Serg—Sergi—uus—" _

"_Seer_—_rrgi_—_us_—"

"_Gi_—_ii_—_ius_—"

They moved forward like they were part of a parade, all dressed up in hideous white costumes and reeking like death, and as the first hundred marched past more followed. Someone was calling them back, and they were heading for the upper floors.

Scowling, Vergil sheathed his sword and followed them.

----

"For the last time, we're closed!"

Dante resisted the urge to slam the receiver down – he might break it, and then he'd be short a phone and out of luck. So he carefully hung the phone up, silently cursing to himself and waiting for it to start ringing again. His patience was wearing thin. He'd been getting calls nonstop for the last hour. Apparently Enzo really _didn't_ understand vacation.

He'd gotten the first call only minutes after Verge's disappearance, and he'd grabbed his sword and his guns and he'd nearly been out the door inside of a minute. How much of a coincidence could it be, an emergency call about a demon attack, right after his kid had been kidnapped by demons?

Lady had protested. He hadn't cared.

And then phone had rung again. Another attack, another emergency. On the other side of town.

And the phone hadn't stopped since.

As if on cue, it started ringing again. Dante groaned.

"Just unplug it," Lady called from the other room.

He ignored her, and picked up. "Devil May Cry," he said, trying not to sound bored. "If you're Enzo, and you're still calling me, I'm going to have to track you down and cut off your head, which won't be hard, because my day job is bounty hunting, and even though you've got a thick neck—"

"Dante, you have to listen to me," Enzo said.

"Actually, I don't."

"Dante! They're offering me so much money, neither of us'll have to work a day after this. All you gotta do is—"

Dante hung up.

He'd like nothing more than to follow a lead, shoot the hell out of some demons, and do _something_ – but how was he supposed to figure out what lead to follow? Another case, he'd likely pick one at random. Even he was wrong, he'd still get to kill things.

This case, he was less willing to make a stupid mistake.

He waited for a few seconds, and when Enzo didn't call back, he stepped away from the desk and into the back room. The guest room, actually, even if he didn't ever have any guests over. That might have been because of the state of the guest room, which only had a moldy red couch and a mold red stuffed chair. Oh, and a lamp, but that didn't work.

Also, currently, an unconscious girl on the sofa. She'd been in danger of bleeding to death a little while ago, but now Lady was pretty sure she'd be okay.

Lady was sitting on the ground with her back to the bed, next to a pile of blood soaked bandages. She looked pissed.

"Jeez," Dante said, throwing himself into the red chair. "Did I miss the memo about the upcoming apocalypse or something? 'Cause this is getting crazy."

"Crazy," Lady said, dryly. Crap, she really was pissed off.

"Yeah, well..." He decided to change the subject. "How's little Miss Sunshine? You said she might be able to help."

"She's the only lead we have, Dante." That was his fault. He could tell by the tone of her voice. "There wasn't anything in Verge's bedroom, and all the wards were still up."

They _had_ been up. Not anymore. Dante had ripped them all back down the first chance he'd got. If any demon was going to try something now, he wanted the opportunity to tear it apart with his hands. And Lady hadn't argued, because even though she was trying to be the calm and reasonable one, here, he knew she wanted the same thing.

"I think," he said, perfectly aware of the fact that she didn't care what he thought, "that this girl was just screwing with you. That's an old hobby of mine, though, so I really can't—"

"Dante," she said. "Shut the hell up."

Ouch.

The phone started up again. Dante put his head in his hands. "Shit."

"Just unplug the phone," Lady said. Again.

"Can't, babe." They'd been over this before, a few times. "Might miss something important."

"You think a _demon_ is going to call and request a ransom? You think Missing Persons is going to contact us? You think Vergil is going to find a payphone and tell us where he is?"

"_Vergil_ is dead," Dante said. He stood up, because the phone was still ringing. "And as for Verge–"

"Verge is going to be dead, too—"

"I know."

"—unless we figure out something besides answering the phone!"

"Damn it, Lady, I know!" he shouted, and he instantly regretted it, because he saw her flinch. "Hey, I'm sorry, I just—"

_Ring. Ring._ "Dante?"

"What?"

_Ring. Ring._ "The phone!"

"Oh." He walked back into the office, and then he crouched down behind his desk. He found the cord for the phone pretty easily, and he ripped it out of the wall. Which caused the phone to teeter off the desk and crashed onto his head. "Ouch!"

"Dante?"

He stood, walked back into the guest room, rubbing his head. "It's unplugged. Are you happy?"

Lady was standing up, and brandishing weapons. Dante paused in the doorway, warily. Getting shot wouldn't kill him, no, but it sure hurt worse than a mosquito bite, and she couldn't really be that mad at him, could she? He held up his hands. "Hold on a sec, Lady."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to shoot you, Dante, I just—"

"Preparing for that random demon attack just around the corner, or maybe waiting for that ransom—"

She shot him in the face. It went right through his skin, and his skull, and his brain, and as his head snapped back on his neck he wondered if maybe she was shooting out parts of his memory every damn time she did this. Did everything grow back exactly the same? Not that she did it that often. She thought it might traumatize their son.

Dante was pretty sure it traumatized _him_ more.

He wiped the blood off his forehead, and he really couldn't think of anything funny to say. "I thought you weren't going to shoot me."

"I wasn't… going to." She lowered her gun, and he had a feeling she really meant it. This was a lady who rechecked her ammunition like a little kid chewed on his security blanket. "I only…"

He shrugged. "Forget it." He marched back into his office, where he dropped into his chair and put his feet up on the desk. "I'm really okay," he called. "It only hurts like getting shot in the face."

She followed him, and lucky for him she'd brought the gun with her. "Dante, I'm sorry."

"I bet."

"I mean it, Dante. I really didn't mean to shoot you."

He bit his tongue on the sarcastic comment, because that would make things worse instead of better, and he really didn't mean it anyway. He put his feet back on the ground and sighed. "Listen, Lady," he said. "Are you okay?"

She stared at him. "What did you say?"

"I asked if you were all right."

The look on her face was pretty clear. She thought he'd lost his mind.

"What?" he asked. He didn't think that was very fair. If he had lost his mind, that was only because she'd shot it out of his head.

"Dante, you've seen me stabbed, shot, poisoned, and nearly killed in an explosion, and I don't think you've ever asked me that."

He thought back, and maybe she was right. "Look," he said. "Usually I can tell if you're okay, or I already know that you aren't. But this is different, so I'm asking."

"I'm not all right." She stuck her gun back in her belt. "But I can handle this. I have to. And I don't want to talk to you about it."

Double ouch.

"It's nothing personal, Dante," she continued. "I just… I just don't want to talk about it. We're going to wake up Mara, she's going to tell us _something_ we can work with, and then we're going to find Verge."

He sighed. "Lady, demons…" He couldn't tell her anything about demons that she didn't already know. Like the fact that demons only took little boys to eat them.

Like the fact that demons couldn't cross the wards, and the only way he could figure they'd gotten the kid was for him to be outside. Dante had only drifted off for a few minutes, could Verge have snuck out in that time? Yes. But why the hell would he?

Like the fact that as sure as Lady was they'd been hunting the kid and wanted him alive, they really had no idea what the hell was going on.

And they were stuck in his office, because there wasn't a damn thing they could do.

He stood up fast enough to knock his chair back, and walked past her. "Let me know when you want to talk to Sunshine, okay?" He started up the stairs to Verge's room.

"Dante, we already looked up there."

"Yeah, I know." He wasn't going to look for clues, he was trying to get away from her. Before they started fighting for real, and made a bad situation even worse.

And if was going to feel guilty, that was something he liked to do without an audience.

---


	4. Crossing Paths

**Chapter Four**: Crossing Paths   
**Author's Notes** : Since it took me a freaking while to get this done, now there is a freaking long chapter. Much of which I had to rewrite _twice_, because I was an idiot and did not save.

Okay, it's not _that_ long.

Having problems uploading, which means that the formatting could well be all kinds of screwed up, though I tried to fix everything. Thanks everyone for the reviews, they make me childishly happy.

---

"What is _this_?"

The man stood in the center of the room, with thick black hair rolling down his back and dressed in a crisp white suit. Vergil had never seen the form, but he recognized the man anyway – Sergius.

Even as a human, he was a hideous creature.

"What is _this_?" Sergius bellowed, and the throngs of demons surrounding him shifted and cringed. "You search for hours, and _this_ is what you bring me?"

The room was one Vergil had not yet seen, it was built like a cathedral with high, ornate ceilings and elaborate statues everywhere. The white demons stayed on the ground, close to their master, while Pride demons clung to the ceiling and shrieked.

It was a messy scene. Ironic that Vergil could stand here in the center of it all, when it appeared that the object of the search was, in fact, himself. The demons directly next to him paid him no attention, though Vergil was fairly certain that if they had been armed with scythes that story might be different.

Hiding in the demons was the perfect plan, really, since it made him difficult for Sergius to see, and impossible to sense. Not with all these demons present.

"I send you after the spawn of Sparda!"

Vergil snapped to attention. With a search parameter like _that_ – he pushed through the crowd, trying to get a better view.

"I send you after the spawn of Sparda and you return with _this_—this useless human garbage! Is this what you think I wanted? Is it?"

Crouched in front of Sergius was a small figure, shivering. The devil lashed out with a brutal kick, knocking the figure backwards, and the child crumpled silently to the ground. Vergil felt his disgust with Sergius growing; he knew the devil was a cowardly opponent, and apparently attacking a human child was not even beneath him.

"This—" He kicked again, and this time the child cried out. "Get rid of _this_, and then I want you to tear this entire city apart. Do you understand?"

Of course. There had been few demons in the tower, because Sergius had assumed Vergil immediately fled.

Imbecile.

Vergil shoved his way to the front of the crowd.

"I will send you out and you will bring me what Mundus wants. Do you—" Kick. "—understand me?"

The child started crying.

"—_Mund_—_uus_—_serv_—"

"—_F_—_F_—_Find_—"

"—_Kii_—_kill_—_the_—_chi_—_chi_—_iild_—"

"Sergius," Vergil said, loudly, taking his place right in front of the rows of demons. "I see you're as unable to take care of your own business as I imagined you were."

The child, a human boy, jumped to his feet at the sight of him. A white demon caught him by the shoulder and forced him down on his knees, the claws bit into his shoulder and the blood flowed freely. He whimpered.

Sergius stared at him for a moment. Then he laughed. "Vergil, I thought you'd come back."

"You certainly did _not_," Vergil scoffed.

"Nonetheless, it fits into my plans nicely."

Vergil doubted that, too. Sergius anticipated battles like _he_ would fight them – by trickery, overwhelming his opponents, and, when the going got tough, fleeing. Catching Sergius by surprise might have been the best thing to happen to Vergil in an entire week.

He rolled forward to avoid the pride demons that had launched themselves at his back. A swing of Yamato cut them down, and he didn't even bother looking.

Then a set of claws hooked on the heavy sword strapped to his back.

The weight sent him to his knees – down on his knees in front of Sergius – and he reflexively summoned his ghostly swords. They pierced his back, destroying the demon and driving sand into the wounds, and he ground his teeth.

The white demons took that opportunity to swarm.

The fought with their _teeth_, and they were damn heavy. He needed his hands to get back on his feet, all the while the things were tearing his coat and flesh. When he shoved himself back up he swung his sword wildly. Almost desperately.

No, not desperately.

The demons fell around him, their blood soaked his clothes and his hair. He could smell it.

Sergius was within ten feet of him. He smiled. "There's a great power, there," he said, and he was talking about the heavy sword. "Why don't you use it, Vergil?"

"I don't think I need to," Vergil replied. "Not to deal with you."

Sergius laughed out loud.

He decapitated the demon that was holding the boy, and the row of white freaks that stood behind him. The boy fell forward with a gasp, and again jumped to his feet.

Vergil turned to face Sergius. "This is your lucky day," he said over his shoulder. "You can run, now."

The boy stood staring, his eyes wide and his hands shaking. Whatever Sergius had said, he looked completely human and utterly useless. Vergil turned back towards the mess of demons, resting his fingers lightly on the hilt of the Yamato. "I've caught you, Sergius," he said. "Unless you're going to run. Again."

The devil gave a raspy laugh, and the demons surged in front of him. Of course he was going to run. He'd have a portal open before Vergil could cut down half of his minions.

Gritting his teeth, he adjusted his stance. He was going to take them all on.

"Daddy!" The boy grabbed onto his coat and buried his face there. Vergil looked down in horror, prepared to peel or beat the child off – but then the second wave came from above, and he did not have time.

He swung his sheath in a vicious circle over his head, clubbing the demons out of striking range.

He grabbed the child by the hair and shoved him to the ground at his feet.

Then he drew his sword.

He wanted to take them all on; he wanted them to taste their own blood before they died at his hands, individually. Screaming. But a tiny voice told him he didn't have the strength to carry on that long. It was a voice he generally ignored.

Now he was getting that message from every muscle in his body. The child's interference had given him the second he needed to realize that if he didn't end this battle now it was going to end in his defeat.

That was not acceptable.

His fingers curled around his sword, and he concentrated. The demons were almost on him. They seemed to be moving in slow motion.

He concentrated, and at the last second he smiled.

"—_Die_."

It took a burst of strength, being everywhere at once. He cut through the air at a speed faster than he could think, his enemies falling from his blows even as he was two, three opponents beyond them. The effects of Judgment Cut were still rippling through the air when he landed, and he landed hard.

Three seconds, and more than a third of Sergius' minions were dead.

The rest were fleeing, tearing into a series of portals behind their master. They had no way of knowing that the massive attack could well be the last Vergil was capable of. That if they continued their onslaught _now_, he would die.

Sergius was glowering at him, his eyes a deadly red. "We will finish this later, traitor's son." The last of the demons had nearly vanished, Sergius was clearly giving them orders of a sort with his mind.

"We could finish this now," Vergil shouted. He tasted copper and spat on the ground, hoping he was bleeding in his mouth and not internally.

Nothing was healing like it should.

"I fight on my own terms," Sergius said.

"As do I."

"Your long dead master kept you in the dark about many things," Sergius said. "You don't have the strength to use your father's power." And he vanished into the portal, taking the last of the demons with him.

Vergil charged after him, but that was a reflex, and he stopped after a step. Sergius was long gone, and now there wasn't anything to be done except wait for him to appear again. Next time, _next time_ he would beo ready, he would—

"Um, mister?"

Vergil spun hard, wincing as he did, even though his instincts told him there was no threat. And, sure enough, there wasn't. Instead, the child was sitting perched on a pile of rocks. The boy flinched at his sudden movement, but relaxed. And then he jumped to his feet, just like he'd done before.

"Um, thank you for saving me before, and I was wondering where are we, 'cause—"

"You aren't any use to me," Vergil said. "Shut up."

The boy sighed. He was injured, bleeding. His clothing was destroyed. But the wounds across his torso were superficial, and apart from them the boy appeared completely healthy. That was odd, because he'd been in the care of demons for hours, at least. "You saved me, anyway," he said.

Vergil sneered. "It's a decision I'm coming to regret."

The boy was young, yes, maybe six. Even so, he couldn't have missed the tone in Vergil's voice. He just didn't seem to care. "Um," he said. "You looked really strong killing all those demons. My mom is really strong too, and I've never seen my dad fighting, but—"

"Be quiet."

The boy sighed heavily, _again_, and sat back down.

Sergius had escaped again, and Vergil had lost track of how many times this was. All of Mundus' minions caused him problems; Sergius was easily the most irritating. Vergil had defeated thousands of demons under his control, but had yet to cross swords with the devil himself.

And for the last five days, Sergius' sole reason for living had been to make Vergil's life a living hell.

Vergil couldn't guess what Sergius' purposes for the boy had been. But it was quite clear that he didn't resemble anyone Vergil knew – and he found the fact quite reassuring.

Unfortunate that the boy took that glance as permission to speak.

"Mister?" he said, standing up again. "Um, who are you? I never heard of you, but you really look like—"

"I'm no one you know." Demons were still about, he could feel and smell them. If he left alone, the child would die. It was as simple as that, and certainly not his problem.

"My name's Verge," the boy continued. He might have seemed calm, if he wasn't speaking so fast he was almost impossible to understand. His hands were still shaking, beads of sweat were forming on his face. "Are you sure you don't know my dad? He's got hair that's white just like yours, even though he's not old, and _you_ aren't old either, and anyway—"

"Verge," Vergil repeated.

"It's short," the boy said. "My dad doesn't like my _whole_ name so he never ever calls me it, and no one else does either. They call me Verge or V or," his voice took on a tone of haughty irritation, "_kid_. I told Dad I don't like it but he does it _anyway_, and—"

"I don't care," Vergil interrupted. He didn't plan on having the child around long enough to have to call him any name at all.

"Oh." The boy sat back down on his rock and frowned. "It's okay, everyone says I talk too much, even Mom doesn't listen to me sometimes… Can I go home now?"

"I don't see how that has anything to do with me."

"Oh." He hung his head miserably. "Oh."

Vergil looked at the child for a second. He didn't feel a trace of pity for him; in fact, there was something about his mannerisms that irritated Vergil on a disturbingly deep level. He turned to leave without a word, and heard the child gasp behind him.

"Are you leaving _now_?" the boy asked.

"I would think that was abundantly clear."

"Can I—Can I follow you?"

Vergil snorted. "I _seriously_ doubt you can keep up."

In a second he would realize he had given the child permission – but that was a second too late.

---

Lady gave Dante about thirty minutes of silence. Maybe forty. Then she couldn't stand doing nothing anymore. "I'm going to wake up Mara."

Dante crossed his arms and peered down at their hostage, who was looking pretty pale. "So the shock wore off, along with all of the painkillers?" he asked.

"I didn't give her any painkillers."

Dante wondered how he felt about that. Not great, but not all that broken up, either. He reached back and pulled out Ivory, which he trained on the girl's head. That didn't make him feel bad, either. "You said she wasn't dangerous, right?"

"Not to us. But she stands a good chance of getting away, again, so we might have to shoot her."

"Because she can fly."

"She can't fly. It's more like..." She paused. "Do you remember—" She trailed off and shook her head. "Never mind."

He opened his mouth to ask her about that, but Lady was already bent over the girl, shaking her roughly by the shoulder.

Mara groaned. "_Go_... _away_..."

"Mara, you have to wake up, now." She looked at Dante. "You're silent coercion, Dante. Silent. That means you don't say anything."

"Yeah, Lady, I get it." He resented the implications there, but knew when to shut up.

She shook Mara again. "Mara!"

"Shut up." The girl sat up partially, and blinked at them blearily. "You're not my mother. My mother is nicer than you. You're—" She blinked extra-hard at Lady. "Oh, God, you're _you_."

Lady sat down at the edge of the bed. She still had a gun curled in her hand, which made the gesture a lot more threatening than maternal. "Mara, we need to talk."

Dante tried to loom menacingly. He didn't think he was very good at it, but that didn't seem to matter. Mara was already so incredibly and obviously terrified of Lady no silent coercion was needed.

Mara covered her eyes with her hands. "You shot me, you psycho bitch. You shot me and now I'm going to _die_."

"You're not going to die, kid," Dante said. Lady glared at him. "Fine, I'll shut up."

"I know I'm not going to die," Mara snapped. "But it hurts like hell. What, lady, you couldn't spring for some fucking Tylenol?"

"The gunshot wound isn't that big of deal," Lady explained calmly. "It was the blow to the head that knocked you out."

"Oh. _Oh_." Mara probably hadn't realized how much her head hurt, distracted by the sharp pain in her thigh. But now she was rubbing her temples and whining even more.

Lady had a way with people that reminded Dante of, well, his brother. Striking up a conversation with either was a good way to get yourself killed, and watching them try and converse with someone was pretty painful. Lady probably had no idea she was doing such a bang up job, and as long as she was hanging onto her nine millimeter he wasn't about to explain, even if she did have it pointed at the ground.

"Mara," Lady said. "You told me something before we were attacked."

Mara sank down into the couch. "I wasn't attacked. I was sleeping in a warehouse."

"Fine, when _I_ was attacked—"

"I want to go back to sleep." She meant it, too, her eyes were starting to drift shut. "Your sofa smells funny."

"Mara!"

"Hnn?"

"You said someone was following me!"

Mara opened her eyes. "Thought I said I was following you." She rolled her eyes up at Dante, and gave him a funny look. "Hey, your finger isn't on the trigger, is it?"

It wasn't.

Mara flipped up off her hands and landed on the wall, like an insect. And like an insect she scrambled across the wall on her hands and knees and made it through the doorframe and into the next room, where Dante heard her tumble to the floor.

"Dante," Lady yelled. "Go after her!"

"What? It's not like she's going to get far."

"Hey!" the girl called. "I bet I'm faster than you'd think!"

And her voice did sound farther away than Dante expected her to be, so he grabbed Ebony and ducked into his office.

Mara was limping and hobbling, all right, but she wasn't doing it across the floor, she was on the ceiling, and making good time, too. She kind of yelled when she saw him, or maybe she saw Lady behind him, and then she tripped over his ceiling fan and fell flat on her face. On the ceiling.

And then gravity went back to normal and she fell on the floor.

Dante was feeling pretty relieved that he didn't have to shoot up his own shop, but then Lady shoved right by him with murder of her face. Mara knew what was coming because she turned her head just in time to avoid getting kicked in the face.

She caught it in the head, though. "Ow, stop it!"

"Mara, those demons that were following me? They came back here and kidnapped my son. So you're going to tell me everything you know about them, or I'm going to—"

"Kill me. Yeah. Ow." She lay back down on the ground. "But if I do, you're going to let me go."

Dante was about to agree with her, wholeheartedly, but Lady was already shaking her head. "Mara," she said, "I'm afraid—"

"No more stalking. No more bounties. No more fucking shooting. I never want to see you again. Okay? _Okay_?"

"All right," Lady said, too quickly, because she was lying. She wasn't very good at it, and pretty obvious. Dante wondered what the hell she was doing, because it was obvious Mara wasn't going to buy it.

"It's mostly those freaks with the big heads you saw, remember?" Mara said, talking to Lady. Dante guessed Mara _did_ buy it. "They've been crawling all over the whole damn city, not just after you. And I don't think they fight, they just look for stuff."

"They didn't mind you following them?"

Mara rolled her eyes. "You guys are fucking retards. They aren't looking for me, they're looking for _S—Spa—Spaar—_"

"I get the point," Lady snapped.

"So they could care less what I do. Very single minded. Kinda like your almost mute boyfriend with the forty-five."

Ebony and Ivory weren't forty-fives. Not by a long shot. But if Lady was willing to let the boyfriend thing slide, Dante guessed he could stand to let Mara get away with that, too.

"What about the wards?" Lady asked. "This entire house was layered in them, and the monsters still got around them."

"And I don't know how they got past your stupid wards. People set those up for me all the time and they never freaking do anything."

"They're for demons, that's why."

"Well, I don't know anything about them. Hey, maybe your kid just got up and walked out the front door? Don't ask me, _I_ don't know."

Lady stopped at that, and she spun on her heel and glared at Dante.

"What?"

No answer.

"He didn't sneak out, Lady."

No answer.

"Jesus Christ, Lady, you think I would _let_ him just walk out into this part of the city? What kind of father do you think I am?"

"A lousy one, obviously," Mara said. "And, hello, I've got one more thing to tell you."

"What?" Dante and Lady said in unison.

"The freaky demons have a leader, guys." She started to get to her feet. "A really ugly guy, looks like he's human but dollars to donuts he's not. They call him _S–Se–Serg–_"

"Mara!"

"Sergius! They call him Sergius!" She stood up straight, Dante suspected she managed it with some help with her powers. Her hair was doing funny things around her head. "That's all I know, that's all I fucking know. Can I go now?"

She was telling the truth, and that sucked because she hadn't given them near enough. Dante sighed, and then he put his guns away. "All right, I guess you can."

Lady nodded. Then she flipped her gun in her hand and smashed Mara in the temple with the butt end of it.

The girl fell back and cracked her head hard on the wood floor, arms and legs spread out like a kid making angels in the snow. Dante puzzled at that for a second, scratching the back of his head.

"Funny," he said. "How come _I_ say she can leave, and you hit her in the head until she stops moving?"

Lady ignored her. Mara was a tiny thing, so Lady could pick her up pretty easy, and she carried the girl back into the guest room. "We'll be gone when she wakes up," she was saying. "We should tie her down or something, so she won't get away."

"Uh, Lady?"

"We have a name. I can try to research it, and we can both see if we can find anything about these demon attacks. It's not much, but we have a name now and—" She dumped Mara on the couch.

Something else was going on here, and Dante was pretty sure he needed to find out what it was, and quick.

"Dante, are you going to help me tie her down, or are you going to keep staring?"

He rubbed his temples. "Rope's in the closet."

He would find out. Just… later

For now, he was going to be killing demons.

---


	5. Unanswered Questions

**Chapter Five**: Unanswered Questions  
**Author's **Notes: Ah, Vergil's not so stupid, he's just suffering from a bad case of I-do-not-care. He's also running about seven years behind the times.

---

Leaving the Tower was quickly becoming Vergil's best option, and he was holding off on it as best as he could. His problems were here. His solutions were probably here. He enemies were here.

The library in Temen-Ni-Gru was the best source of information on the demonic, the magical, and the supernatural. He'd actually regretted not having time to stop there before, but the last time he'd been here he'd had other priorities – namely, finding Arkham before his idiot brother managed to die at the madman's hands.

It hadn't been out of kindness. Vergil wasn't stupid: he'd known he didn't have the strength to take on Sparda's power alone.

Now he didn't have to conquer Sparda's power – he had it. He needed to control it.

He needed to do research, and that was why he was heading for the library. He just wished he was doing it alone.

Two paces behind him, the boy sighed.

"Make that noise again," Vergil said, "and I will ensure you are unable to in the future."

"My dad says it's not nice to threaten people," the boy said. "I know 'cause one time my kinda cousin Jeremy stole my Wolverine and I found out and I told him I'd hit him a _lot_ if he didn't give it back, 'cause I could 'cause I'm a whole lot stronger than him, and I got in trouble and my dad said—"

Vergil stopped in the hall, and looked right and left, making double sure he knew where he was going. Getting lost with someone to witness it would be more than he could stand. "I tire of hearing about your father. And your mother."

"How come you don't like my dad? I don't think you know him, his name is—"

"Do _not_ finish that sentence." The library should be up ahead. Probably. Damnit, he had just been here, and nothing had changed. Remembering shouldn't be this difficult. "This way," he muttered to himself.

The boy's eyes lit up. "What's that way?" he asked.

Vergil walked on without answering.

It didn't matter – the boy followed him anyway. In fact, once they reached their destination the boy darted ahead and bolted through the doors. Vergil rolled his eyes before following.

Once he entered the library, he felt the dull rage grow.

He was going to have to change his plans.

The entire library was torched. Destroyed. Ruined. It looked like someone had set a bomb off in here – bookshelves were toppled and blasted. The walls were charred to the ceiling, scorch marks discolored the stone floor.

"This book was on fire," the boy said, running up to him and holding out a book. He dropped the document in question, and it disintegrated when it hit the floor. "And that one, too. I think they all were on fire."

"Yes," Vergil said, through gritted teeth. "I can see that."

"I was just _saying_—"

"Be quiet!"

This had obviously been deliberate – and it had happened after the last time he had passed through here. The library he remembered showed some signs of destruction – actually, it'd shown signs of Dante. Vergil could still see the bullet holes in the wall. But that hadn't been like this. And as dearly as he wanted to blame his brother, he was an unlikely culprit.

"What are these books about, anyway?"

"Demons and horrors," Vergil answered absently. Searching the library for some sort of answer had been his last recourse. Without an answer he could not use his father's power, and without the power he could not defeat Mundus. He knew because he'd tried already.

The only thing the Force Edge had given him was just enough power to escape with his life.

He had _fled_.

"If you want to know about demons, you should talk to my mom and dad. They know lots and lots about demons, and monsters and stuff. Mom says when I'm older I can—"

"Mention your parents again, and their names will be the last words you speak."

Maybe it was the chill in his voice, but the boy stopped talking, and Vergil's threat hung in the air in absolute silence.

The boy's shoulders shuddered violently, and he abruptly turned away, folding his arms across his chest.

This _Verge_ had been prattling on consistently for about an hour, and though Vergil had tried to tune him out he had still learned far more than he'd wanted to about the boy. He was five. He enjoyed comic books. He lived with his mother and visited his father. He was instantly comfortably with Vergil on sight alone and smelled of the Legendary Dark Knight Sparda.

Though in Vergil's mind he had only been away from this tower for five days, it was quite clear that more time had passed in the human world. He could find out, he could simply ask the child for the year. He could ask the child for his father's name.

He could – if he wanted to. If it would tell him anything he didn't know already.

"If you know who my parents are," the boy said, once he was finished hyperventilating, "you should let me go home."

"I am hardly standing in your way."

"I can't go by _myself_. The demons will find me again and I'll die. They're looking for me, they said so when they—" He broke off, shivering.

Children were so weak, it disgusted him. It reminded him that he'd been just that weak, once. "If it comforts you, I doubt your parents will miss you. After all, they looked after you so well the first time."

The child burst into high pitched sobs.

Vergil glanced at the door, half-expecting a horde of demons to come bursting through, drawn by the noise. He considered cutting the child down and ending all of this – but he was only considering it in the abstract. He'd known for some time that he wasn't going to kill the boy, just like he had never thought of killing that irritating little girl. Alice.

It'd hardly be sporting.

"If there are any demons about, you are going to bring them here," Vergil said.

"It's—it's not Daddy's fault—" the boy choked out. "It was—I knew it was safe inside but I heard—"

"You willingly left the protection of your home?" Vergil asked coldly.

The child nodded, keeping his back to Vergil and picking at his ruined sleeves.

"Then you deserve what happened to you."

Instead of upsetting the child further, Vergil's words seemed to calm him down. The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve and turned back around. "I—I know," he said, and nodded.

Now that the noise was gone, Vergil was better able to think.

Without the benefit of the library, he had no choice but to regroup and do his research elsewhere. There was only two places he'd known of in the world that had the information he was seeking – one such place was the Vatican. He'd gotten in there before, but now he didn't have the time.

The second was the private library of Arkham.

It was unlikely that the books had survived, since it had seemed Arkham's lunatic daughter made it through the ordeal. He doubted she would want to keep any reminder of her father around – and he could not blame her.

However, if the library _had_ survived, it would be located in this city.

And if he did manage to find it, the odds of him running into that woman were quite high. And if she had remained friends with Dante over the… what? Months? _Years_?

He gave the boy a quizzical look.

The boy was still wiping his eyes, and he squirmed uncomfortably under Vergil's glare. "What?"

"Nothing." In any case, this Tower was the last place he needed to be. It was nearly night – he could pass through the city below unnoticed. He would have to. His current state of dress – the shredded clothes, the blood coated garments – meant he was ill-suited for civilization.

And since the boy would undoubtedly following him, he was suffering from a similar problem, as well. They would need the cover of darkness to pass unnoticed.

"I'm leaving," Vergil said, turning towards the doorway. "If you intend to follow me, you had better not slow me down."

"O… okay." He nodded repeatedly. "I won't, I promise."

"Hn," Vergil answered, and then he stalked off. If he was lucky, he would remember the shortest way out of this tower.

And if not, he would be walking in circles for a long time.

---

Mara woke up with a headache bad enough to kill.

She opened her eyes and tried to sit up. She couldn't.

No wonder. She'd been beaten in the head about three times and shot today. It was really amazing she was still alive. But there was no reason why breathing was so damn hard. She inclined her head just a little bit, and then she looked down at herself.

"Mother_fucker_," she shouted.

Ropes crisscrossed almost her entire body, wrapped like snakes around her feet, her ankles, her stomach and chest. Her arms were folded across her chest and tied there, her legs were tied together at the ankles and knees. The ropes were heavy, and scratchy, too.

Her eyes were about all that she could move; she rolled them around her head and saw nothing she hadn't before. The room was practically empty and it was a total dump – the couch she was tied to was nasty and old. This place fucking smelled. _God_.

What the fuck. What the fucking fuck. What had she done to deserve this?

This closet of a room had no windows and the door was shut, but she could just barely turn her head enough to see the slivers of light that came in through the doorframe. It was daylight, and it symbolized freedom. Too bad she was wrapped like a mummy and tied to a fucking couch.

How had Houdini done it? Escaped from all those fancy traps? She'd read something about it in a Stephen King book about vampires but it'd been so long she'd forgotten the method. Books about monsters had become less appealing when she'd starting running into the things in real life.

Nothing was worse than that horrible lady with her demented eyes. Mara hated those eyes, they were creepy and she was pretty sure they'd started showing up in her nightmares. In fact, she could swear she'd seen them there before… Christ, maybe she was psychic now or something.

God, she was seriously about to cry. She just wanted to get out of here. She needed to get the fuck out of here.

Was running really the answer? _Fuck yes_. That woman and her albino boyfriend were clearly psychopaths, and Mara needed to flee just as soon as she was able. And yet. She wasn't quite ready to live the rest of her life sleeping with one eye open, waiting for—for freaking Beatrix Kiddo to come barging into her life straight out of a nightmare sequence. Only with more weapons, and less blonde.

_Mara_, she would say. _You and I have unfinished business_. Her freaky eyes would have an evil glint, and Mara would be helpless against her onslaught – and against her rocket-on-'roids. She would make a moving and futile speech for her life, and the lady would shoot her into tiny bloody pieces.

No, _chop_. Beatrix Kiddo-style.

And scary as the lady was, her boyfriend was about a hundred percent more frightening than her. Mara had seen him take about five steps and that was enough to know he moved like a predator – his hair was too white and his eyes were too blue, something about him was _off_. That was how she knew he was the father of the Kiddo's son, she'd seen the kid once and he had the same blue eyes. And cheek bones. And they shrugged in exactly the same way.

Mara might be hyper observant, but that was going to do about jack shit for saving her life.

Her powers mostly worked by reflex – until the lady started hunting her she'd never really thought about them. She'd thought maybe she was telekinetic, but no. And she couldn't fly. She couldn't move anything except herself and anything she happened to be holding and she couldn't teleport either. It was just… magic. Fucking magic. And she was beginning to suspect that was the lady's entire interest in her.

Oh, and also the reward. But, shit, if it was just money Mara sure as hell could steal enough to double it. No price on _her_ life, no way.

She started struggling – which really meant wiggling around just the little bit she could manage. She was at that for about thirty seconds, when one of the ropes wrapped around her chest slipped up around her neck.

She froze.

"I will fucking kill you!" she yelled.

The building was empty. She would have heard something by now.

"Fucking kill you!"

The _second_ there was a way out, she was so out of here. She'd move to Canada. Mexico. Whatever.

"I hate my life!"

There was no way she deserved this. No one on this planet deserved this. Adolf Hitler didn't deserve this. Genghis Khan didn't deserve this. Marilyn Manson didn't deserve this. Mara was sure she wasn't thinking of the right name on that one, but _whatever_. He didn't deserve it either.

"I'm going to get out of here eventually!"

She hoped that little kid got his brains eaten out. That'd teach 'em.

---

"Oh my, what an adorable little boy," the old woman cooed from the doorway, bending down and grinning like an idiot. "He looks just like you, yes he—"

Getting here had taken several hours on foot – and getting out of the tower had taken most of that time. Lucky for them most of the demons had retreated with Sergius. Or more likely, they weren't in the Tower because they were combing the city, looking for him.

Vergil remembered this old haunt as a place to trade rumors and information regarding the Underworld and the occult; it hardly seemed to have changed, and yet it was something of a switch, coming in here with a… _toddler_ in tow. "It's not mine," he snapped. _Don't even suggest it_. "I'm here for information, information regarding—"

"I'm not _it_," the boy said.

Vergil glared, and then cuffed him in the back of the head. "Do _not_ interrupt me."

"Ow!" the boy whined, much more dramatically than was necessary, because in truth Vergil had hardly touched him. "That hurt!"

The woman gasped. And then she scowled. "How dare you treat your own son like that!"

This was a hindrance he had not been anticipating. He was never going to convince her that the boy was not his son. And could he really blame her? A DNA test would almost certainly agree. And why else would he be traveling with a child, at this hour? Thinking of it in those terms, claiming the boy as his son might be the preferable option. Pity he had no intentions of doing so.

"The child is not mine, and I'm looking for—"

She slammed the door in his face.

Vergil jerked back, narrowly avoiding getting his nose broken. He could hear the woman ranting on the other side, and he glared down at the child. "I do hope you have a home to go to."

"I don't know where we _are_."

"I fail to understand why that has suddenly become my—"

The door swung open.

An elderly man stood in the doorway, his head lowered. "I apologize," he said. "My sister can be a little—"

"I don't care," Vergil snapped. "I'm looking for information about a man named Arkham, and if you don't know anything then I'm wasting my time here."

The man beckoned Vergil with his hand. "Yes, yes. Come this way."

Vergil paused warily, but beside him the boy darted forward, so eagerly trusting that Vergil had to fight not to roll his eyes. He followed them both, eyeing the bar as they passed through it. It was a seedy place, full of drunkards and half-naked woman – the kind of place he could imagine his brother enjoying.

Vergil cursed under his breath. If Dante intruded unwanted in his thoughts again, he was going to be punished most severely. In the unlikely event their paths crossed.

"Where are we going?" the boy asked.

Vergil started to tell the boy to shut his mouth, but the old man spoke first. "I have a quiet room in the back, where we can talk."

Vergil's skin prickled with suspicion, but he remained silent. This couple was probably little more than human, and even if they weren't the odds that they could pose a threat was than unlikely.

They were escorted to a small hallway that looked like it led to the bathrooms, but the old man opened a door, revealing a tiny meeting room, complete with a table and several chairs. A young man was waiting in there for them, standing in the corner of the room with his arms crossed.

Vergil was uncomfortably aware of how closely the boy was standing next to him as they entered the room, and the young man smiled at them as they entered. "Hello, there," he said. "Cute kid."

The old man locked the door behind them, and Vergil felt the boy tense up. So he wasn't stupid, that was refreshing. "Chase," the old man said, referring to the younger man already standing in the room, "have you—"

"I've got this, Dad," Chase snapped. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small handgun, which he calmly pointed at Vergil's head.

An entire family. Beautiful.

Vergil stood up, sneering at the weapon. In Dante's hands firearms were a formidable weapon – in anyone else's they became nothing more than a human trifling. "It's time for us to leave, now."

"Not quite," Chase said. "It's like this – an old guy offered us quite a sum of money if we could give him anything on a guy matching your description."

"Wonderful," Vergil said. Sergius, doubtless. That would be why he had assumed human form – to better move among humans and collect information.

"And I bet if we came up with the guy himself, we'd be able to bargain for even more."

"A logical conclusion," Vergil replied, evenly.

"If you're willing to beat his price, though, we can talk business."

Vergil cast his eyes around the room, then he lowered his eyes. "As you wish. We can talk… business."

Vergil drew his sword and cut so cleanly the young man never saw the attack coming; his decapitated head hit the table with a disgusting smack. The old man's eyes widened – he had time to do nothing else – and Vergil hurled the Yamato across the room, impaling him through his chest, against the wall.

"Trash," Vergil said, retrieving his sword. The body slumped to the ground. "Let's go."

Getting no response, he turned around.

The boy was standing stock still, much as he had on their first encounter. His eyes wide, and despite that his face was expressionless. He was staring right at the dead body of the old man. "You—you killed them."

"Obviously."

"But—but—" Tears were welling up in his eyes.

Vergil did not have the time for this – and he would never have the patience. "You have two options," Vergil said. "You can stay here, or you can come with me. Those are your only choices."

"I'll… go with you. But—"

"Very well," Vergil said, stepping towards the door and opening it. The old lady was standing on the other side, and when she saw the scene behind it she started screaming.

"Oh my God! Oh my God, you—"

The entire bar turned around, and _again_ the boy started crying, covering his hands with his face and stumbling the way he thought Vergil was. He was almost correct, close enough that Vergil reached out, grabbing his shoulder and steering him in the right direction. He shoved past the old lady.

No one else in the bar moved to stop them. Obviously, no one else cared, and they left her alone to sob in her grief.

He shoved the boy out the door and slammed the door shut behind them.

"Wh—where are we going now?"

"I don't know," Vergil responded. And the truth was, honestly, he didn't. He did know what his first order of business was – he needed to get rid of this child, immediately.

---


	6. Lost Paths

**Title**: Degrees of Separation  
**Author**: Britani Gael  
**Author's Notes**: Tried to get into everyone's head this chapter, and it might have been too much. Nonetheless, almost everyone comes together! Yes! Much of the next chapter is actually already written, so it shouldn't take be that long in coming… Thanks to Sylla and number157493 for the reviews on the last chapter!

----

The sun was rising on Vergil's sixth day without sleeping, if he hadn't lost count somewhere. His situation was as grim as it had ever been – he never imagined he could fall this far. He was on the run, injured and exhausted, and just to make matters worse—

The boy started tugging on the sleeve of his new sweatshirt. "I don't like this. It looks funny."

"And I'm starting to hate the sound of your voice," Vergil answered flatly. If the streets weren't so deserted the boy probably would be too frightened to speak – but, no, there wasn't anyone at all, and Vergil's presence alone was apparently not very intimidating, not to this child.

The boy yawned. "I think you stole it. You don't look like you have any money."

"I did no such thing," he snapped. Vergil _hadn't_ stolen it, he had acquired the jacket using the only currency he now possessed: fear. His threats and blackmail had gotten him an assortment of random facts and useful knowledge.

It had led him here. And it had given him the coat for the child, because he had been complaining about the cold, and because Vergil didn't want to be stopped by the police. The boy's wounds were fading fast, but still obvious, and Vergil wasn't in the mood for anymore pointless killing.

"If you tell me where you stole it from, my mom can pay them back. I think she has lots of money, even though I can't get a Playstation and I have to eat the same sandwich for lunch everyday, even though most of the other kids at school get fruit snacks or candy or—"

God. _Enough_. "Do you recognize your surroundings, child?" Vergil asked.

The boy stopped talking, and stopped walking as well. He looked around. "Um," he said. "Not really."

Perhaps because he had never been here, but that was too much to hope for. More likely he just didn't pay attention. "Do you even know where it was I found you?"

The boy cringed, but nodded. "I know it's called, um, Tema Neat Crew. My mom says most people can't see it, and it's a bad place to be. I'm not supposed to ever talk about it."

"Your mother wasn't wrong." It certainly sounded like an explanation a mother would give a curious child, and it confirmed some of his suspicions. How else could the humans of this city continue their lives around the monstrosity, unless they were completely unaware?

He could have used this child for more information, he realized. But it was too late for that, now. They turned a corner.

Recognition lit up the boy's face.

"This is where—" And then he took off, tearing down the street. At the end of the block there was rundown building, bars on the windows and a flashing neon sign right at top.

_Devil May Cry_.

Fitting. Dante had always been the weaker one.

The boy reached the door long before Vergil did, and started pounding on the glass with small fists, ineffectually. Vergil rolled his eyes as he approached, and tried the handle.

Unlocked. How very unsurprising, that Dante would bar his windows but forget to lock his door when he left. Granted, his brother might have had other things on his mind.

The door swung shut behind them as they stepped inside, again the boy charged ahead and started shouting. "Dad? Dad!"

Vergil stood in the center of the room as the boy ran around the office, surveying his surroundings. Like the rumors had suggested, Dante was now making a living running this "shop." Either that, or he starting up a garage band, judging from the pile of musical instruments in the corner.

The room was a complete, disgusting wreck.

The desk in the center of the room was stacked with beer cans and lose papers, the walls adorned with the heads of demons and other foul creatures. Vergil wondered how Dante managed to get them stuffed. The occasional random bullet hole completed the picture, along with the layer of fine dust that covered nearly every horizontal surface.

"You live here?" Vergil questioned flatly.

"No, I don't _live_ here, I only live here sometimes." The boy didn't share his discomfort, in fact he was as animated as Vergil had so far seen him. "I have my own room, it's upstairs, and I guess Dad is out looking for me or something, because he's not here now, and—"

The front door crashed open behind them, and both Vergil and the boy turned at the sound of the noise.

The figure stormed into the center of the room, a sword strapped to his back and a firearm in each hand, point as the presumed intruders. "Who the _hell_—" Dante broke off and the sight of them, and stopped in his tracks.

Both of his gun hands dropped, along with his jaw. He looked at Vergil and at the boy and back again. Vergil met his gaze unwaveringly.

Dante was Dante, but he was clearly not the same brother Vergil had faced only a few days ago. His hair was longer, messier, he'd traded his red coat in for one so similar that Vergil had to wonder why he'd even bothered. But most striking was the change to Dante's face – his brother was older. Years older. It surprised Vergil how much irritation that caused him, knowing that his younger brother now had nearly a decade on him.

Vergil realized that this was not the future. He realized that he had died at Mundus' hands after all, and now had an eternity to look forward to in this very personal hell.

At least he had the benefit of seeing Dante shocked.

"Dad!" The child ran for his father.

Dante grabbed him and hauled him up, holding him with one arm and curling his other hand around the back of the child's head. The gesture was sickeningly affectionate, and if Vergil had had any doubts about "Verge's" paternity, they were now put to rest.

"Dad!" the boy chirped, before lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Daddy, that man looks _just like you_."

"Yeah," Dante said, shifting his gaze from his son to stare at his brother. "Yeah, I know."

The child was content to cling to his father, and again he had Dante's full attention. Dante brushed the hair out of the boy's eyes and asked, "You okay, V?"

The boy nodded.

"You brought him back?" Dante asked Vergil.

Vergil nodded once. Dante would certainly find out whether he admitted it or not, and it simply wasn't worth lying about.

Dante put his son back on the ground, and took a deep breath. "Vergil," he said. "Thank—"

"I'll be outside," Vergil sneered, and he turned around and left.

----

Vergil was _alive_.

Dante and V both flinched as the man slammed the door on his way out, and through the glass Dante could see Vergil's shadow outside. Lurking. So he was alive, and apparently as much of a colossal jerk as he ever had been. Which was fine, because he was alive. They both were. Holy shit, things were getting strange. And to think, he'd only come back here to grab Beowulf.

He ran a hand through his hair and knelt down in front of the kid. "Are you really okay?"

Verge didn't answer. "Dad, how come that man has the same name as me?"

"Well, kid," Dante started. That was a little tricky to explain, and it was pretty obvious Vergil hadn't bothered doing any of the work himself. Verge didn't even know who the guy was, but it wasn't like any of that was surprising. "It's like—"

"Well," called a bitter, angry voice, its owner nowhere in sight. "It's this all just—fucking—_adorable_."

"Dad, who's that?"

"Honestly, I have no idea." Well, he knew her name. After that, it was all Lady. Now that they had Verge back Dante didn't have any reason not to find out just what her beef with the girl was.

"You better let me go," Mara continued, "or I'll tell—"

"Mara," Dante yelled at the back room. "If you don't shut the hell up, you're going to get shot again, I promise."

She grumbled, fell silent, and then it sounded like she started thrashing around, knocking the sofa into the wall with a loud crack.

Verge jumped a mile.

Dante's attention snapped back to the kid, who had never been this jumpy since the day he'd been born. Verge looked tiny, swamped by a dirty child-sized jacket that was still a few sizes too big, and his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"Verge," Dante began, setting his arms on Verge's shoulders. "I need you to tell me—"

"I don't wanna talk about it."

"I know, but—"

"Leave me alone."

Dante pushed the small jacket back, and hissed at what he saw. Verge's clothes were practically shredded in places, in others long gashes tore the cloth. He ran his fingers across a cut on Verge's chest, and the kid shivered. "These are claw marks," Dante said.

Verge stood there passively, even as Dante pushed the jacket all the way to the ground and pulled the T-shirt up over the kid's head. The material was dark, so he couldn't see the blood, but when he brought the shirt near his face he could smell it.

"Damn it!" He balled the shirt up and threw it onto the ground. Verge's entire chest was covered in fine lines – tiny scars were the only evidence of wounds already nearly healed, and would probably disappear within hours. That didn't change the fact that his boy had been hurt, and hurt badly. "Why didn't you—"

Verge cringed and shrank away. "Sorry," he whispered.

Dante caught him by the shoulders, when the boy tried to squirm away he pulled him into his chest. "No, no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," he said quietly. "You're okay, it's okay, it's not your fault…"

He waited for tears. They didn't come.

After a minute of silence, Dante pulled back. "I'm going to call your mom, okay?"

No answer. In fact, Verge wasn't even looking at him; instead he was focusing right on the ground. With an inward sigh, Dante picked him up and carried him across the room. He set the kid down on the desk next to the phone.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, V?"

"You would've…" Verge bit his lip. "You would've come, right?"

Dante froze as he reached for the phone. "Jesus, kid, of course I would have." He couldn't stand the idea of Verge not trusting him, even if he deserved it. "Your mom and I – we were going crazy, okay? We'd do just about anything to keep you safe. Understand?"

Verge didn't even pause. "Would you kill someone?"

_What?_ Dante hesitated, and decided that honesty was the best policy, here. "Yeah, I would."

"Even someone… someone not bad?"

Just what the _hell_ had Vergil done?

"V, listen. Are you listening?"

Verge nodded.

"I love you."

"I know."

"A lot."

"I know, Daddy."

"If you know, then don't worry about it." He messed up the kid's hair. "I'll take care of everything, Verge, I promise."

He picked up the phone and dialed from memory.

----

Lady shot the last demon in the forehead before her cell phone rang twice – she fumbled with the phone with one hand as she shoved her gun into her belt, and managed to open it. "What?"

"C'mon, is that any way to answer the phone? Let me guess, you've got a problem with telemarketers? You know you can just submit your number to the—"

"Dante," she snapped. She'd been at this for hours, she hadn't found a clue and she'd been injured twice, and she couldn't believe that Dante was even back at home. Much less joking. "I do not have the—" It dawned on her. "Oh my God, you have him back."

"I have him back," he said, smugly. "He's right here."

"How—is he all right?"

Dante hesitated. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" She heard a creak behind her, and she spun and fired several shots left-handed. The Hell Pride shrieked and disintegrated.

"I don't know, Lady. He's just…"

"There's nothing wrong with me," a voice interjected. Loudly.

She held the phone between her ear and her shoulder, allowing her to draw her machine gun and fire with both hands. Between shots, she asked, "Is that Verge, Dante? Let me talk to him."

"There's something else I need to tell you," Dante said.

In the background, she heard Verge whining. "I want to talk to Mom."

"Hold on, kid."

A series of portals opened over her head. Crap, she'd been sure she'd had them on the run, and now there wasn't even any point in fighting them. She dropped both guns and rolled out of the way, and when she was clear pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it.

"Is this a bad time?" Dante asked.

She shielded her face from the explosion. "Just spit it out, Dante."

"I want to talk to Mom!"

"Just a minute, V."

The smoke cleared, and Lady carefully stepped around the room, making certain this time that the job was really done. "Can't it wait until I get there, Dante? I'm on my way now."

"It _could_, but you'd be pissed. And I really couldn't blame you."

"Then what is it?"

A long pause. Lady bent down to check under an assortment of tables and odd objects, but didn't see sign of a single demon.

"My brother's standing outside," Dante said. "Right there, right now. I have a hunch he can hear me."

Lady stopped short. "_What_ brother?"

"Oh, come on, what the hell brother do you think I'm talking about? You don't think I'd've mentioned it if I had more than the one?"

Lady checked her ammunition and then holstered her weapons, doing both in silence because it gave her time to think. When she was finished she stood still for another few moments. "Let me talk to Verge, Dante."

Dante didn't say a word, and Lady heard the shuffling of the phone being passed between hands. Then, "Mom?"

She already knew Verge was all right but actually hearing his voice was the confirmation she'd been waiting for – she felt the hours and hours or stress and anxiety fade away. "I'm here," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Uh huh."

He was quiet for a long time, and the only thing she could hear over the line was his soft breathing. "Are you coming over here, now?" he asked in a small voice.

"Right now," she assured him.

There was another long silence. "Mom?" he asked again.

"What is it?"

His voice dropped even lower. "I want to go home."

She was stepping outside when he said it, and she winced. "We'll go home as soon as we can, okay?" _Poor Dante…_ "For now, just do everything your father says. I'll be there right away."

"…Okay. Um, bye."

More shuffling, and then a click. She looked down at her phone display and the message blinking up at her: Call ended.

She shoved the phone back in her pocket. Nothing she could do about it now, except get over there just as fast as she was able.

----

Dante took the receiver Verge handed him and placed the phone on the cradle carefully, keepings his eyes on the shadow outside the door. Now he was going to have to deal with _that_, and it wasn't something he was looking forward to.

He sighed, and then put a hand on Verge's head. "C'mere, kid."

Verge complied, without even a word about the nickname, and crawled into Dante's arms. The talk with his mom seemed to have reassured him, and well, that was good. Dante stood and started up the stairs. "You're probably pretty tired, huh?"

Whatever had happened to the kid was probably going to give him nightmares for the rest of his life, but despite all that, he nodded. "I didn't sleep for a long time." He hesitated. "Because, um…"

Dante shook his head. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

Verge bit his lip. "Okay."

Dante couldn't blame him for not wanting to be here anymore. Between the psychopath stalking the front porch, and the lunatic tied down in the backroom, Devil May Cry wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine in this neck of the woods. In fact, right now it was source of the problems of this entire city.

"Are you gonna go talk to that man?"

"In a little while." Dante opened the door to V's room and made sure to shut it behind him before he crossed the room, and set Verge down on the bed.

Verge burrowed under the covers and reappeared in a second, curling up on his pillow. "He's not very nice."

"Got that impression, did ya?" Dante pulled a chair up to the bed and dropped into it.

"I still like him, though."

Now that was almost newsworthy. Ah, well, Dante figured that in the whole wide world, there would have to be _someone_, somewhere, that liked Vergil. "He'll be thrilled to hear that."

"I don't think so."

Dante leaned back in the chair. "I'm gonna stay here for a little while, and then I'll be downstairs. All right?" He waited for Verge to nod, and then he continued. "Anything even a little weird happens, I want you to scream bloody murder. All right?"

Verge nodded again, his eyelids fluttering. The kid must have been dead tired, to fall asleep so fast. Hopefully, that accounted for his blank expression and his complete lack of anything to say.

Dante stayed and watched him until he was sure Verge was asleep, he could tell by the breathing. Then he stood up slowly, kept his steps quiet, opened and closed the door very quietly. And as soon as the door was shut, he leaned against the wall and rubbed both temples.

Because, _Christ_.

Vergil had better have some answers, and he damn well had better be willing to share them. If not, then so help him…

Dante found him waiting outside.

"So, bro," he said, leaning against the doorframe. Vergil kept staring into the street like Dante hadn't said anything at all.

Typical.

"You gonna answer me, or just keep zoning out like a freak?"

"Obviously I can hear you, _Dante_." He said the name like it was a cuss word. "I don't know why you need me to acknowledge it."

Yeah. This was going to be a fucking breeze.

"Whatever, Vergil," Dante responded. "If you want to be all pissy, that's just fine with me. But you better step inside, 'cause we're due for a little chat."

Vergil snorted.

"Now."

Honestly, he expected more of a fight, but this time he didn't get it. Vergil didn't say a word, and followed him inside.


	7. Confrontations

**Author's Notes**: I was thrilled with all the reviews I got for the last chapter – thrilled enough that I was inspired to do what I have never done before: review responses! In no particular order…

**Chrome**: Funny, I actually don't see Vergil as being particularly observant – more like superfocused. He got obsessed with things ("I must claim Father's power for my own!") and missed the little details ("What the hell is Arkham babbling about now?") – to the point where he got completely blindsided. ("Betrayal huh what now?")

**Sylla**: Thanks for all your reviews so far, your comments have been a big help and have helped me think my characterizations though. Again, thank you!

**Meirelle**: I'm so glad you like the OCs – I'm kind of worried that they're annoying especially since they're playing a much bigger role than I originally intended.

**Marionettefire**: Thanks! Characterization is what I spend the most time working on,

Also thanks to **Enigma of the Lost, Bettany**, **Fellow Sufferer** and **Klaske**!

----

**Chapter Seven**: Confrontations

----

Vergil looked like a _kid_.

That's what struck Dante first, as he strode back to his desk and sat down in his chair, reaching into a drawer for a bottle of tomato juice. Of course, he didn't feel nearly as casual as he was acting, but the way he figured it, he already had the advantage. Because Vergil looked like a kid.

His coat – it was the same coat he'd been wearing in Temen-Ni-Gru – was completely shredded from the waist down, and Dante was sure Rebellion had delivered that slash across the fancy shirt. Strands of hair fell into his face, black circles hung under his eyes. Ironically enough, Vergil looked like hell.

Dante leaned back in his chair and took a swing. "So, bro," he said. "How long's it been?"

Vergil stared at him. It was funny to see his so speechless for once. Finally, he answered. "Five days."

Dante choked on a mouthful of tomato juice.

He sat up sharply, wiping the juice off his chin and doing his best to cover his surprise. He tried to think of something witty to say, but then Vergil scowled and turned his back.

He was tapping his foot nervously, which was beyond strange coming from Vergil.

"Okaay, so," Dante said. "What happened with your big plans in the Underworld?"

"I challenged him. I lost." Five words. Dante wondered what it'd cost him to say them.

It was very wrong that he was kind of enjoying this.

Maybe it was because he'd had never once managed to beat his brother, and therefore couldn't imagine anyone else managing the task. _Wish I'd been there to see it_. "And so you ran like a coward, and brought all the demons back to Earth." He leaned back in his chair, and rested his feet on the desk. "Feel free to correct me when I get the story wrong."

He couldn't see Vergil's face, and he could still feel the man glowering at him.

Temen-Ni-Gru was only five days ago? Impossible, that'd make Vergil nineteen years old. Well, he looked it, but that was beside the point. This Vergil was for real, though. If his winning personality didn't give that way, then the glowing amulet on his chest sure did.

And the sword. Couldn't forget the sword. Both of them.

Not only was this really the real Vergil, but Vergil was in a whole lot of shit. Dante could tell because he was here. Yeah, both of their lives were crashing down around their ears, but Dante was having too much fun to let Vergil's bad mood get him down. "And now you want me to get involved, save your ass, and—"

"I want no such thing," Vergil snapped, spinning around, his eyes bright with anger.

"Then, dude, what the hell are you doing in my shop? There's really not room for you right now." Dante winced as something crashed in the room behind him. "Really not room."

"Taking in strays, now, are we?"

Dante shrugged. "Hell if I know."

"I wasn't talking about your… prisoner."

Dante sighed, and then he wearily got to his feet. "Listen," he said. "My kid is not on topic right now, and he won't be unless _I_ bring him up. Got it?"

In response he got stony silence.

"That's not to say I'm not grateful," Dante continued. "In fact, that's just about the only reason I'm not ripping your skull out of your head for traumatizing him like you did."

"If you gave him an excessively sheltered childhood, then that's hardly my responsibility."

"V's _five_."

"Then you're treating him as if he was human?" Vergil snorted. "The way he whines and carries on, I wouldn't be surprised if he was."

He hoped Vergil wasn't about to do something stupid, like imply V wasn't really his kid, or that he was weak for not fighting off a horde of demons, or any other BS. Dante really wasn't in the mood to beat the shit out of him, even though it probably wouldn't be hard at this point. So, he changed the subject – for now. "So, where've you been for the last _seven years_, Vergil?"

If it threw him he didn't show it on his face. No surprise, Vergil had probably been wandering around town for at least a few hours, and he wasn't stupid. "Where do you think I've been, Dante?"

"Are you ever going to answer a Goddamn question?"

"I didn't know you were one for words."

"You want me to beat it out of you, then?" Dante stepped around the desk, raised his hands in a way he imagined was both casual and threatening. But probably just the latter, actually. "I'll warn you beforehand – I can't promise I won't enjoy it."

Vergil glared. "You have yet to beat me in a fight."

"Take a look at yourself. It won't be hard."

Vergil met his gaze for several long, tense seconds, and then he looked away. "I've been in the Underworld, as you well know. I've been evading various demonic servants for days, I killed many of them, I am very tired. What do you want me to tell you?"

Dante shrugged. "That helps a little bit. What about those white demons? Lady was talking about them – I've never seen them before."

"Lady." His tone was flat, not betraying any sign of curiosity.

"Arkham's daughter," Dante explained.

"Hn." That gave him something to think about, at least for a second, and then he continued. "The demons you're describing work directly under a devil called Sergius. He takes orders from Mundus."

"Who wants your head on a plate."

"More or less."

Dante had worked out most of that already. It would be pretty damn unfortunate if Vergil didn't know much more than he did. "What are they called?"

Vergil blinked. "What are what called?"

"Those demons."

"I don't know. Why would I name them?"

Dante smirked. "Well, you named all the _other_ demons, so I thought—"

"Be quiet," Vergil snapped.

"Oooh, sensitive?"

Fun as this game was, Dante knew he'd taken things just a step too far. Vergil's pale face colored just slightly, and then, "You had no _idea_, Dante," he hissed. "You have no idea what our father was capable of."

"And you do."

Vergil reached for the sword on his back. Just a reflex, though, because he dropped his hand in a second. "I've claimed his power," he said.

"So," Dante replied. "Dad was a champion at getting his ass kicked and crawling away from it on his hands and knees?"

It said a lot that Vergil didn't move for his sword, instead he went after Dante with his fists, and Dante hadn't seen him that mad since they were both about nine years old. Grinning, Dante sidestepped his attack, grabbed his arm and slammed Vergil down onto the desk.

It shocked him how easily he pinned Vergil, even as the man snarled and struggled. Dante leaned over him. "Dude, you're dead on your feet."

Vergil stilled. "Let me up, Dante," he said, his voice low.

"Huh. No."

He started thrashing again, shouting – well, no curse words that Dante had never heard before, but it was still pretty damn funny hearing them come out of Vergil's mouth. And still, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't even get his forehead off the desk.

It must have been killing him.

"Dante!" he yelled.

Dante sighed. Then he let Vergil go.

Predictably, the man charged him again. So Dante stepped back, and decked him as hard as he could.

Vergil hit the ground face first, and lay there without moving. Still, that was no guarantee he was really unconscious, so Dante nudged him in the side with the toe of his boot.

More like kicked him, really.

Nothing. Good.

"What are you planning on doing now?"

Dante glanced at Lady over his shoulder. She was standing in the entrance of the shop, and her expression was disapproving, but more than likely that was because she wanted to do the honors. He knelt down next to his brother and hauled him up by the arm. "Well, Verge's room is taken, and the couch is taken. As much as I hate the idea of putting him in my room…"

"You really want him sleeping here?"

Dante pulled the arm over his shoulder, and stood back up, shouldering Vergil's weight without difficulty. "I don't think he's slept at all since we last saw him. He's not going to rest unless I make him, and if he doesn't rest he's going to get killed."

"How long has it been for him?" So she'd noticed, too.

"Less than a week."

She considered that. "How is that possible?"

"I don't know. He was being cryptic and annoying." He shrugged, which wasn't easy with Vergil on his back. "I don't know if time in the Underworld flows differently, but I guess I never really thought about it before."

She nodded after a moment, obviously distracted.

"Kid's upstairs in bed," Dante offered, tilting his head towards the stairs.

"Is he sleeping?"

"Yeah."

"Did he say anything about what happened?"

"Not to me." And that bothered him a little bit, but again he couldn't blame the kid.

She nodded once, thinking, and then without a word headed up the stairs. She disappeared into Verge's room.

Dante sighed, shook his head, and started up the stairs himself. Ironic as it was, it was time to put his kid brother to bed.

----

Verge was still tired when Mom woke him up – he heard her come in through the door, and he shot straight up in his bed because he couldn't be sure if it was her or maybe something else.

But it was her, and when he saw her he sighed. "Hi Mom," he said. It sounded stupid but he didn't know what else to say.

Mom didn't mind, she sat next to him on the bed and hugged him, and he hugged her back. He didn't know when he started crying but he tried to keep quiet about it, and Mom rubbed his back and smoothed his hair.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

Verge sniffed and nodded against her neck.

"Did you get hurt?"

"Yeah." He sat back on his bed, rubbing his arms without thinking about it. All the marks were still there, white and going away but still there. "Dad already saw," he added miserably.

He wished he'd been braver.

He knew Mom and Dad wanted him to say what happened, but there really wasn't anything to say. The demons only talked to each other in their creepy voices and they didn't say anything important anyway, they'd hurt when they'd grabbed him but they'd hurt that man more. That man knew more than him, but maybe he wouldn't say.

Verge didn't think he liked Dad very much.

"Did Dad hurt that man?" Verge thought he probably did even though he wished he didn't – he liked that man even if he wasn't very nice. The man wasn't _bad_, either.

Mom looked surprised. "Why would you think that?"

"'Cause I think that man's a little scared of Dad." It seemed weird to Verge that anyone would be scared of Dad – he almost never yelled, and Verge didn't get in trouble for anything, even when he was really bad.

But that man didn't even want to hear about Dad's _name_. He hated talking about him or hearing about him and he'd looked at Dad real funny when they'd met.

"They had a bad fight," Mom said. "A long time ago, before you were born."

"Did Dad win?"

He expected Mom to say yes. Of course Dad won. But she shook her head slowly. "No," she said. "No, he didn't win."

"Then how come he's scared of Dad?"

"I don't know that he is." She looked at his door instead of his face, and she was maybe lying to him. Verge hoped she wasn't. "But he probably should be. Especially if he hurt you."

She didn't _say_ a question but Verge knew she'd asked one anyway. He shook his head. "No. He's really mean and he scared me some but he didn't hurt me. He saved me from lots of demons and I think he knew who Dad and you were the whole time but he acted like he didn't."

"I'm not surprised."

"How come?" He looked up at Mom, but she was still looking away. She was probably thinking about whatever Dad and that man were talking about. "Do you know him, Mom?"

"Not really. Just what your father told me."

"But you met him."

"Once." She didn't want to talk about him anymore. Maybe Dad would say more, but probably not. Dad didn't like to talk about stuff that wasn't video games or comic books, or sometimes Mom. Lots of times when Verge asked him questions he was pretty sure Dad was lying when he answered.

Verge yawned, and put his head back down on the pillow. "We can't go home, can we?" he asked.

He knew they couldn't. The demons that had got him were still around, were maybe still looking for him, and also that man and Dad too, probably. Mom was really good at fighting but she wasn't like Dad. Verge had never seen Dad fighting but Mom said he could beat anything.

But not that man, the one with the same name as Verge. He didn't _look_ that strong.

"You know we can't." Mom said. She pulled the blanket up over him. "We're safer here."

"Even when that man is here?"

"Do you think he's dangerous."

"No, but you and Dad do." He was glad to see Mom, but he was so _tired_, he just knew he was going to fall asleep. "I think he's just mean."

Mom laughed softly. "He is mean, isn't he?"

"Uh huh." He closed his eyes. "He told me that if I didn't stop talking about you and Dad, he'd make it so I'd never say anything ever again."

Mom stopped laughing.

He didn't want to see how Mom looked at that, so he kept his eyes closed like he was asleep. In a few seconds Mom said a few bad words, pulled the blanket up higher so he'd stay warm. Then she stood up and walked out, and if he'd really been asleep the way she shut the door would have woken him up for sure.

Mom and Dad were different. Dad was strong and safe, because he was strong and because he never let Verge get hurt if he could help it. Mom was comfortable and even if she was sometimes mean to Dad she always knew what to say to Verge.

He loved them both lots but he didn't like it when they kept things secret. Like they did all the time, almost every day. Today was worse. He didn't know why.

He fell asleep. Really, this time.

----

"How are the Vergils?" Dante asked.

Lady looked up from the book she was reading, as she sat at Dante's desk. He had taken to pacing the front of his office, which was driving her nuts. She'd managed to keep her mouth shut about it, though. The last thing she wanted was to start another fight with him. "They were both asleep, last time I checked."

Dante nodded, as if that had told him anything. "And Mara?"

"Asleep, too, or faking it."

"She's not a part of this. You should let her go."

That was out of the question. She'd probably never catch Mara again, and the world was far safer with her locked up in here. "No."

"You planning on explaining—"

"No."

"I don't buy her being dangerous."

"No."

"That wasn't even a quest—"

"Shut up, Dante."

He stopped pacing. "Whatever. Vergil's going to wake up, soon."

She shut her book. It'd been a memento from her father's library she though might help her, but so far it'd told her nothing she didn't already know, and nothing about the current situation. There was no mention of Sergius, and all information about Sparda was written in glyphs she couldn't read. "It's only been a few hours."

Dante shrugged. "He's not really asleep, I knocked him unconscious. He'll wake up the second he's physically capable of it."

"Are you going to ask him anything else?"

There was so much to ask him. What happened after he'd gone back into Temen-Ni-Gru, why he'd hardly aged a day, how he'd come to rescue Verge. Lady even had another one for him: Why he'd bothered carrying Dante out of the Tower. Fat chance of getting an answer to _that_, though.

"I don't really see a point to that," Dante said. "He's not going to answer anything." He laughed. "I don't think he likes me very much."

Lady thought about that. "What if I asked him?"

"He'd probably kill you. So I'd have to stay there and protect you, and that brings up the whole issue of me being in the same room as him."

"I can take care of myself, Dante."

The look Dante gave her then was so condescending she didn't even bother waiting for his response. She stood up and marched up the stairs towards his room. She didn't need to wait for him to draw her a map – it'd been hers too, once.

"Lady, hold up," he called after her.

"Fuck you." She didn't wait for him to respond to that, either. She slammed the door to his bedroom open.

Vergil sat up immediately at the intrusion – so Dante'd been right. He looked startled only for a second, and then he narrowed his eyes. "You," he said.

"_You_," she said right back. Surely she had more of a reason to hate him than he had to hate her.

"I don't have time for this," he snapped. But he made no move to get up, perhaps because he couldn't. He probably didn't want to risk falling flat on his face in front of the daughter of his most hated enemy. "I have nothing to say to you."

She approached the bed. "That's too bad, because I have things to ask you."

He shut his eyes.

"The boy you rescued," she continued, as if he wasn't deliberately ignoring her. "Where did you find him?"

"Ask him yourself." He opened his eyes again, this time to glare at her. "I have no interest in appeasing you."

She had to remember that whatever he said, he had saved her son. "Vergil," she said, hating the pleading tone in her voice. "Please."

He understood. "The child is yours."

She nodded once. It was the last thing she wanted to get into with him, but she felt she owed him something, even it was just acknowledgement that he was talking.

He chuckled darkly. "Little Mary Arkham, in bed with a devil. Your father would be proud."

His words were drenched in sarcasm, but she knew he was actually telling the truth, and so did he. Her son was the grandson of the legendary Sparda, her father _would_ be proud. She also knew that Vergil was being so antagonistic because he was trying to make up for spending the last several hours helpless. It was still hard to resist rising to the bait.

"So," he continued. "How are you liking being Dante's little wife?"

She curled her fingernails into her palms. "I'm not his wife."

"Oh? His whore, then."

"Vergil." Dante was standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe. His tone was cheery, his face clearly wasn't. "Glad to see you're up and at 'em."

Vergil scowled at Dante, and he rolled over in the bed like a spoiled child.

"Good talking to you too, bro." He beckoned Lady over with a wave of his hands.

"Dante, leave him alone," she said, but she walked over to him. It wasn't like the conversation had been accomplishing anything, anyway.

Dante prodded her back as she walked down the stairs, as if he was determined to wear away her very last nerve. "All right, I'm _going_," she snapped.

He didn't say anything until they were standing back in his office. Like he didn't want Vergil to overhear. Then, "Sorry. I forgot he could be such an asshole."

"Don't worry, I didn't." And she hardly needed rescuing. "He's just… angry. And lashing out."

"Lady, we're not talking about little Verge, here. That there's a full grown man."

"He's nineteen, Dante. How mature were you when you were nineteen?" He didn't need to answer that, because at nineteen he'd been worse than Vergil and she'd been there for it. "He knows you're stronger than him now, and it's bothering him."

"Oh, I doubt _that_."

"Why?"

"You noticed he's carrying two swords, right? The one he's not using is the Force Edge, sweetheart."

She let the pet name slide. "That's the sword he won from you."

Dante narrowed his eyes. "It's not like I even wanted it."

"It doesn't matter if you wanted it, Dante, what matters is—"

He look on his face stopped her cold.

At first she thought he was angry at what she was saying, but no, she knew that look, she knew that stance. He slowly reached behind him, and drew Ebody and Ivory.

Something was coming.

"Go get Verge, Lady," Dante said quietly. "Get him now."

She pulled a pistol herself, and glanced at the door. There wasn't anything here that she could sense, but she didn't doubt him for a second. She took a step back, and then another. And then she turned and sprinted back up the stairs.

----


	8. The Welcoming Committee

**Chapter Eight**: The Welcoming Committee  
**Author's Notes**: Okay, I fail completely. I got sidelined by the Nano, and then I tried to get this out before I went on vacation… last winter. And now, here I am. I'm not immensely proud of this chapter – but after nearly six months of fussing over it, I figured if I didn't post it now, I probably never would. Thanks for all of your reviews! Also, if there are any formatting issues, let me know. The site gave me a lot of trouble uploading this...

---

The city was deserted – hardly a surprise, considering it was the dead of night and the Seeker demons had likely killed any foolish enough to venture outside. Stupid creatures, yes, but they'd done their job. Sergius knew where the halfing was hiding, now.

He glanced up at the flashing neon light above the door. Sergius had torn the city apart and honestly had not expected to find him in a place like this. When they ventured above, demons generally preferred the lowest levels of human cities, where the rankest of human motivations thrived like a disease – but this brat obviously thought he was above such nonsense.

When backed into a corner, pride was the first thing to die.

Sergius climbed the steps and quietly knocked.

A small girl with stringy blonde hair answered in seconds, swinging the door open. The room behind her was shrouded in darkness that seemed nearly unnatural. Generally that wouldn't have been a problem for Sergius, but while he wore human form he was subject to many of its limitations.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper. Her eyes darted left and right.

"I'm sorry," Sergius said. "Do we know each other?"

"Can I help you?" she repeated.

He tapped a finger on his mouth, looking down at the girl quizzically. "I'm looking for a man, with a shock of white hair. Grievously injured."

She continued to squirm. "…name," she muttered.

"Hm?" Sergius raised an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"I need your name."

He smiled. "Well, that's simple enough. My name is Sergius."

"Mara, down!" And that was a new voice.

Though it sounded oddly familiar.

The girl threw herself to the ground, both her arms wrapped around her head, and the darkness started spitting fire. Sergius took hits to his chest, his arms, his face – and staggered back, stunned by a new revelation.

This hurt.

After twenty, maybe thirty of the blows – he was overwhelmed, and fell to his knees in the street. The inside of his mouth was strange, coppery, and he stared down at the white of his shirt, streaked with his own blood.

He touched one of the holes in his chest with his finger. The stinging agony was shocking. If this was even a small taste of what it was to be human, then Sergius did not like it.

He looked back into the doorway.

The girl was back on her feet, staring at him with a mixture of shock and horror. She raised a shaky hand to point at him. "Jesus fuck, he's still alive!" she shouted, and the shakiness in her voice had vanished. "Do you _know_ how much lead you filled him with?"

"Mara, go upstairs now," the voice said from the shadows. 

"I mean, if you threw him into a lake, he would sink! And I am never going to be a decoy for you again, because he's looking right at me and he doesn't look ha—"

"Mara!" An arm garbed all in red grabbed her roughly. "Up the stairs, now! You remember what I said—"

The girl tried to shrug him off, ineffectually. "Yeah. Yeah, if things go south I'd better—"

"Then go!"

The girl gave him one last long look – Sergius caught her gaze and held it. Though it was unlikely the trap had been hers she had been instrumental in his humiliation. She would pay almost as much as the man who had shot him.

Mara broke off her stare and spun into the dark room, vanishing.

He could feel the flesh of his torso shifting and fusing, in a moment his clothing would be the only evidence of his injury. He stood up slowly, keeping his narrowed eyes fixed on the doorway, and sure enough, his opponent stepped outside.

Sergius was not shocked to see the face of the man he'd sworn to kill – though he was surprised to see it worn by another man entirely. This opponent was dressed in red and carried an outlandish sword across his shoulders. The smirk, however, was exactly the same.

Sergius smiled again. "I did not expect Vergil to seek the help of his brother."

The man called Dante shrugged. "He didn't."

"And yet you'll fight me in his place?"

"Not exactly."

"Oh?" Sergius asked. "You'll tell me where he's hiding, then?"

Dante rolled his eyes. "Not a problem. He's right behind you."

Sergius spun hard – too late, he faced his opponent just in time to receive a brutal slash that sent chunks of flesh flying off his face. He swore and seethed, holding his ruined face as Vergil smirked and resheathed his sword.

"You underestimated your opponent," Vergil said flatly.

"On the contrary." Sergius struggled to right himself, though he could now recognize the sinewy feeling of his skin knitting together. "You've done nothing I wouldn't expect of you." And Sergius was done with surprises. He raised a hand above his head.

"Dante," Vergil said, suddenly not so apathetic. "He's summoning—"

A series of red lights flashed behind Dante. The demonic shrieks were unmistakable, and both brothers instinctively glanced at the small hoard gathering in the building.

Sergius moved.

Vergil's stance was solid, but injuries like his did not simply _vanish_, son of Sparda or not. The halfling moved to block Sergius' attack but was unprepared for the devil to teleport behind him – Sergius grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head around with a dry crack.

Vergil crumpled. 

Sergius glanced towards the brother.

Dante cursed, pausing for just a second – he was trying to decide whether to challenge Sergius or the demons. In a moment, he lost the opportunity to make that decision, because they were both on him.

Sergius punched him hard in the gut. Even taken by surprise, Dante was quick; he twisted out of the way and the blow was only a glancing one. It didn't matter. It was enough to knock Dante back into the building, into the thick of things, and the demons swarmed.

Sergius followed, confident that his minions would do his fighting for him. He watched Dante struggle – his killing speed was remarkable, but there were just too many enemies for him to take his eyes off them for even a moment. The scene amused him for several seconds, and then he turned his attention to the room.

A drab place, certainly, and small. Where had the others gone?

He heard snarling behind him.

Vergil was standing, panting. The sword he held was not the graceful katana he'd wielded only moments before.

"You looked so comfortable, child," Sergius said, smiling. "Were you not enjoying your nap?"

The halfling seethed, he gripped Sparda's sword tightly. "I'll show you what happens to those who make a mockery of me." Sergius did not have to guess to know what was going to happen next.

The brother was up to his neck in demon pawns, and it was a miracle he could even hear over the racket his weapons were making. "Vergil, what the hell are you—"

"Be quiet, Dante!"

Sergius smiled. "You haven't the strength, child."

"Do not try me!"

Sergius was only vaguely aware of the powers the sword was supposed to contain – and it was painfully obvious the halfling hadn't a clue. Power was coursing through his body, Sergius could plainly sense that. But his appearance stayed the same, the sword maintained it's current form. The only change Sergius could see was in his eyes – still blue, but they almost appeared to be burning.

The halfling leapt forward.

Sergius dodged the attack, but only just – the very tip of the sword passed so close he could feel the wind off it. Vergil spun full circle with the strike, and the demons at his back vanished.

They fell in a rain of sand, and Vergil advanced again.

More portals opened – demons appeared in his path, they fell all around him, and he destroyed everything with careful, deliberate strokes of his sword. Nothing even slowed him down.

Even as he fell back, almost desperately, Sergius could admire that power. Even if it might kill him.

The flurry of blows continued, never pausing, never wavering, and Sergius sound found himself with his back to a wall. And Vergil was still coming.

It took all of his strength and speed to vacate that space; he moved so quickly that any human and most demons would think that he'd simply disappeared, and he found himself behind Vergil. His position did not make him feel secure.

The attack had left a clean hole in the wall, as large as a man.

"Vergil, what the fucking _hell_?"

Vergil's eyes were flat, but they flickered to the left, towards the voice. Instead of his brother his eyes fell on more demons – and he drifted towards them as if pulled by a string. 

Powerful, and completely thoughtless. Fitting for a creature that was, after all, half human.

The distraction gave Sergius the precious time he needed. He dove to the side, summoning the power that would give him a chance to regroup. The portal closed over him, the scene faded to black.

Though he'd lost the battle, Sergius smiled. This was a complication he could use, oh, most certainly.

---

Well, Vergil had wiped out the demons.

Demon blood was splattered across the walls – the walls he had left, anyway. Several had come down in the chaos, and most of those had been knocked down by Vergil himself. "God damnit, Vergil, you asshole. This is my place!"

In response, Vergil turned.

He'd kept human form, at least, but beyond that there wasn't much normal about him, not anymore. Vergil's face was completely slack, his eyes were glowing red. And his grip on the Force Edge was just unnatural, clinging to it like his life depended on it.

He took a step forward, and naturally Dante took a step back.

"Dude," Dante said. "Are you okay?"

The attack would have made contact if Dante hadn't been expecting it. He flipped over Vergil's head and landed with his sword drawn. "Vergil, the fight's over!"

Vergil turned to face him, raising the sword in front of him. He was a lot stronger now, Dante could feel the power coming off him, but something was clearly wrong. Maybe he couldn't handle it?

"You want to duel? Fine with me." He smiled, raising his own sword as well. "Been a while since I got some quality sparring in." Maybe Vergil had a lot more power now, but his body was all kinds of fucked up. That was something Dante could use to his advantage, so long as—

"Dad!"

Lady and Verge were both standing at the bottom of the stairs, wide-eyed and confused, and Vergil's head slowly turned in that direction. Like an evil robot gone mad, he was seeing everything as a threat right now, and Vergil only knew one way to deal with threats.

He started towards them.

"Shit!" Dante leapt again, this time at Vergil instead of away. He landed between him and Lady and Verge, just in time to block that attack. And the one after it, and the one after that, each strong enough to knock him back nearly a foot. "Knock it off, Vergil!"

"Dad!"

"Dante, what's—"

Sparks flew off the colliding weapons, but Vergil couldn't get through the guard – the guard that was taking everything Dante had. Snarling, Vergil drew the sword back with enough force to crack the wall behind him.

Twenty-five feet behind him.

"You two stay behind me!" Dante shouted over the destruction. "Actually, just get the hell out of here."

Lady held Verge but the hand – Dante knew that if it wasn't for the kid, he'd never talk her into leaving. But, damnit, she still wasn't going. "What are you planning on doing?" she called back.

"What do you think I'm planning on doing? I'm going to fight him!"

"You'll lose!"

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe." He hefted Rebellion over his shoulder. "But I've got a job to do, so beat it, will ya?"

It sucked that she was right. He'd faced down this kind of power once before, and even then he'd needed help. Vergil's help. Which made the situation kind of ironic, really. Now he could only hope that Vergil didn't really want to hurt him all that badly. Deep down.

He was counting on Vergil's soft sport. On him having one. Freaking hysterical.

"What are you guys doing?" Mara asked, wandering down the stairs and scratching the back of her head. "Aren't the demons—"

Vergil twitched.

"Look out!" Dante yelled.

Mara shot to the ceiling and ran like a rabbit. Once she'd put about twenty feet between herself and Vergil, she started yelling: "What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—You are all crazy, you are all—"

"Mara!" Lady shouted. "See if you can—"

Mara laughed. "Oh, Christ, you are fucking nuts. I'm getting the hell out of here, is what I'm doing." She flipped off the ceiling and landed in a crouch on the floor, making dead sure to put Dante and Lady between herself and Vergil.

"But tell you what, I'll do you a huge favor." Faster than either of them could respond, she vanished and appeared directly next to them, grabbing the kid and stepping outside. "I am going to kidnap your son. You'll thank me later."

She crouched and leapt into the air, holding Verge by the arm and taking him with her. They flipped twice in the air and then landed against the wall of the opposite building, and she ran up the side of it, dragging Verge along with her. They disappeared over the roof.

"Mara!" Lady shouted after them.

"Leave it," Dante said. "She's right, he's safer!" In fact, once V got over being terrified, he'd probably be thrilled. Just like Spiderman.

Vergil watched their retreat.

Lady scowled. "Now what?" she asked.

Dante stepped sideways, circling Vergil. He had no idea why his brother wasn't moving right now. Hell, even under the best of circumstances he was hard pressed to say why Vergil did _anything._ "We need to shut him down," he said.

"How?" 

"Hell if I know!"

Lady rolled her eyes, drew her guns, and started firing.

Dante charged forward.

There'd been a time when he and Vergil had been almost evenly matched – maybe Lady would tip the scales in his favor. Probably not. Vergil didn't seem to have any trouble dodging her hail of bullets. He didn't seem to have any trouble parrying Dante's slashes at the same time.

Dante knew he wasn't going to win.

It was like Vergil could read his mind, because the instant Dante let that sink in, his brother smiled.

Shit.

Vergil attacked with renewed energy, slicing and dicing and locking Dante's sword up with an attack he'd never even seen. Rebellion sailed out of his hands, across the street. It clattered way, way too far away, and all of a sudden Dante was having flashbacks.

They all stood still for just a second, hardly breathing, and then Vergil did the one thing Dante hadn't been expecting. He went after Lady.

She tried to duck, and even if she was fast for a human she wasn't quite fast enough. The blow caught her across the temple, and she collapsed.

"Lady!"

Vergil swept forward to finish the job.

Without a sword or any kind of weapon, Dante was running low on options. He jumped forward anyway, reaching forward in an attempt to knock the attack away. It earned him a few nasty wounds but it worked out better than he'd hoped – the lunge knocked both of them backwards, onto the ground.

Dante's hands fell on the amulet.

He didn't know why he grabbed it, but it sure pissed Vergil off.

The grappled for a couple seconds like kids after a piece of candy, Dante keeping his hands locked on the amulet and Vergil trying to pry him off. For a second, it seemed like Dante might be winning – even if Vergil was landing some stinging slashes on his back, even if the air was flashing red and there was suddenly a strange smell in the air.

Vergil dropped his sword, shouting, "Dante, you _will_ let go—"

Dante didn't take a moment to appreciate his brother's sudden return to lucidity. He slugged him—hard—and just like last time Vergil slumped to the ground. 

Dante got to his feet, and then kicked Vergil in the head twice, for good measure. That'd keep him out for, like, an hour. Maybe. Better safe than sorry.

He kicked him again.

He wanted to feel relieved, like he'd dodged another bullet, but no. He didn't, really. He ran a hand through his hair, and looked around. Things were about to get interesting.

He looked at the pillars of stone and bones all around them, the unfamiliar terrain. He looked at the blood red sky. He knew this should come as kind of a shock to him, but it didn't, not really.

He sighed. "Yeah, that's just fucking great."

----

So, you learn something new everyday. Apparently Mara could pull people into her own weird gravity by touching them. She supposed it was just a little risky finding that out under the present circumstances, but no time like the now, right?

They touched down about four blocks away from the raging battle – they could still hear it, but Mara was pretty sure they were safe. She let go of the kid, who jerked away from her like she was the monster she'd just rescued him from.

"Hey!" he shouted. "My mom and dad—"

Mara brushed the wall powder off her shirt. "Are going to be completely and totally fine, with my luck."

Hardly reassuring words, but the kid relaxed. "I guess so. They're really strong, huh?"

"No kidding." Mara looked left and right. It was a little late, maybe eleven o'clock, but that was no reason for this part of town to be completely deserted.

Demons, probably. That was no good.

"You saved me, didn't you?"

Mara shrugged. She honestly had no idea why she had – for the first time in a long time, she hadn't done it with any ulterior motive, and she was now hard pressed to find a way to turn it to her advantage. "It was on the way."

"The way to what?"

"To getting the hell out of there." Mara looked up and down the street. "And I'm about to get rid of you, too, because you're really annoying and the last thing I'd ever want is your mother after me."

The kid sighed. "Lots of people are saving me today."

"And you're not even cute enough to justify it. Life's just weird sometimes, huh."

So the kid was kind of cute, but not near cute enough for Mara to actually feel sorry for him. His parents would probably be fine – in fact, they would probably subdue and befriend that monster, and then they would come after Mara with a bloody vengeance. The kid was like a juicy steak tied around her neck, bait for monsters she didn't even want to catch.

Mara was so, so sorry. To whoever she had done whatever to. Because now she believed in karma.

"You have cool powers," the kid was saying. "Can you fly?"

Mara shrugged. "I don't have a clue. Was I flying?"

"Nuh uh. But you can run up walls and stuff. My mom says my dad can run up walls, but she says it's not good for anything but showing off, and I think—"

Mara was feeling a lot less special after meeting this particular family, who could do everything she could do. Just, better. "I think you've probably got powers, too," she said.

Verge raised his eyebrows. "Me? How come?"

"'Cause you're the spawn of Satan and Neo, that's why." Sure, maybe to this kid, people like his parents were normal. She'd bet money he didn't go to public school.

"Who's Neo?"

"Uh, the Matrix? The movie?" Definitely not public school.

"Is that rated R? 'Cause my mom says—"

"Uh, this might be news to you, but your life is rated R." She sighed. "You know what, never mind. We'll just hang out until your parents kill the scary man, and then you can run home and… be, um, away."

The kid looked doubtful. "I don't think my dad wants to hurt him. I don't know why Dad knows him, but—"

Mara thought about that, dragging memories from a few minutes ago to the front of her mind. "He's your dad's brother," Mara offered. Sometimes seeing everything had its advantages. This was probably not one of those times.

"He is?"

"They've got the same face. And they said—never mind." She shrugged. "Either they're twins or the result of some horrible evil genetic experiment gone very wrong, and even though your family's freaky enough that it's not even that unlikely, I'm gonna go with…"

"I don't know what you're saying," he said, and then he yawned. "I wish I had a brother. My mom and dad are broke up so I don't think I will, but it'd be nice if I had—"

Mara nodded. "Uh huh. Whatever."

The kid sighed. "I just want to go home."

"And that is so not my…" She looked at the kid. "Your home, huh. You live with your mom?"

"Uh huh. We have a house, it's big and old but I like it a lot, and I wished Dad lived more close but that's okay, because on Mom's bike she—"

"Yeah, whatever." She caught the kid by the shoulders and spun him around. "Listen. Your mom's done me some favors over the past few weeks, and I've been just itching to repay them."

The kid narrowed his eyes. "You're lying."

"I am not."

"Then how come you were tied up?"

"That's easy. To stop me from repaying her! Your mom is very generous." If Mara could get into that house, odds were very good she could figure out why the witch woman was so damned obsessive about her. It was something, anyway. "I think taking you home would be a good place to start repaying her."

He yawned again. "I don't believe you."

"Do you want to go home? Ever?"

The kid caught on to blackmail quicker than she would've expected, considering his age. His little shoulders slumped. "How come the people who save me are never nice?"

-----


End file.
